


Fragments of a Dream

by magista



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-24
Updated: 2002-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:51:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 58,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magista/pseuds/magista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy becomes trapped in a world of her own nightmares.  Will Spike and the Scoobies be able to bring her out?  Oh yeah, and the world might be in danger of ending, too. Spoilers up to "As You Were."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> By magista  
> For the purposes of this story, the season 6 episode "Hell's Bells" takes place about a month after "As You Were". That's the only way I can make everything happening in this story fit. You understand, I'm sure :-)
> 
> This was actually written before the date shown, but because of the great NC-17 rating kerfuffle at ff.net, this is the date of reposting.

**Nightmares**

 _The first sensation that met her when she recovered consciousness was the metallic tang of blood in her mouth. She thought she must have bitten her lip when she . . . fell? She raised herself groggily to her knees from the wet floor where she found herself lying and looked around. The last thing she could recall was following Collin down into the catacombs. She had come to challenge the Master and defy prophecy about her death, but now she couldn't remember what had happened._

The cavern echoed with the sound of dripping water. She got slowly to her feet, smoothing her long white dress down over herself. At least it didn't seem to be any the worse for wear, only wet. If she had managed to destroy the Master, maybe it was still possible to make it to the prom. Of course, she reflected, the only trouble with dusting a vampire is that you couldn't prove a thing afterwards.

Dizziness suddenly threatened to overwhelm her and she leaned heavily against a crazily tilted pillar. She took several deep breaths; they didn't seem to help much. A dull ache began deep in her gut, and her vision narrowed to a bright centre. Her whole body throbbed with the pain. She staggered toward the passageway to the upper world, hoping that Giles would be able to figure out what was wrong with her.

Movement in the passage opening caught her eye and riveted her attention. Two figures emerged, one after the other. The first didn't interest her at all, but the second . . . Her vision closed down even further, centring only on him. There was an unmistakable scent of . . . what? He seemed to promise salvation, though, deliverance from this torment that wracked her body. They were saying something - a name, perhaps? - but all her senses were subsumed to sight and smell.

The first man came forward and grabbed at her arms. He smelled dead, and cold, and she shook off his hold easily, sending him flying across the cavern to crash brutally into the wall where he lay still, his neck twisted at a crazy angle. The other man stopped, uncertain, but she flung herself into his arms before he could decide to leave. He almost seemed to glow with the promise of warmth, health and life, so she nuzzled up close against him, wrapping herself tightly around him. He stiffened suddenly, and she didn't understand why, but glorious warmth began to fill her, easing away all her aches, and she didn't care any more. She just wanted him closer; she'd draw him inside her if she could.

His knees buckled suddenly and he slipped limply from her grasp. She stepped back uncaring as he slid to the floor, a delicious lassitude suffusing her limbs. Slowly, the room came back into focus, and hearing, touch and taste returned to her. A rich flavour filled her mouth, and she savoured it, but winced when her tongue suddenly encountered razor sharp teeth. The skin of her face burned for a moment, and then everything seemed to return to normal.

"Buffy," said the man at her feet, weakly, and she looked down. Blood flowed sluggishly from a jagged wound in his neck, and his body sagged lifelessly even as she watched.

"Xander?" she said, confused. Then again, in anguish: "Xander!" She fell to her knees beside his body, and gathered him into her arms, rocking helplessly. Cold tears rolled down her face, as she understood what had happened, what she had done. The prophecy had been fulfilled after all. She had died, and now she would take her friends with her. And she could already feel the hunger beginning to stir again . . .

Buffy sat bolt upright in her bed, clutching at her pillow, which was damp with her sweat. A stale, sweetish taste filled her mouth and she almost spat in disgust. The inside of her cheek burned, and she realize she must have bitten herself in the course of her nightmare.

She went to the bathroom to rinse her mouth out and refill her water glass. A fleeting nausea gripped her when she spat pink-tinged water into the sink, recalling the inhuman hunger of her dream. And yet she couldn't help but wonder if that was what it felt like to be a vampire - those paradoxical feelings of near limitless power and crippling need. She shook her head to clear the intrusive thoughts. _Vampire Slayer, not vampire psychotherapist_ , she reminded herself. _I really don't need to know._

Buffy climbed back into bed and tried to compose herself for sleep again, but it was a long time coming.


	2. Avoidance

**Avoidance**

Buffy arranged to meet Tara between classes the following afternoon at the Espresso Pump. She needed to talk about what had happened between her and Spike and Riley over the past few days, and didn't want to have to face the shock and shame of telling someone who didn't already know some of what had been going on. Tara had been like a second mother to Dawn over the past year, and now Buffy felt she needed some of that support herself.

When she reached the Pump, she found Tara already holding a booth for the two of them in a quiet corner. Buffy placed her order, and then joined her.

"Hi Buffy," said Tara warmly as she sat down. "How have you been since Riley and Sam left? I imagine it was difficult for you to see him again after so long," she said, seeing right to the heart of people's troubles, as always.

"And finding out he was married and had a perfect wife and perfect life didn't really help," added Buffy with some asperity. "Way to make me feel like I'd messed up my own life beyond possibility of recovery."

"Your life isn't messed up, Buffy," Tara insisted gently. "You've had to go through some things that would have left most people catatonic, or worse. You certainly can't be blamed if you're finding it difficult to get back to normal." "Normal," Buffy sighed. "Right. Not the adjective I would have chosen." She ran one hand wearily over her face.

"Are you feeling okay?" Tara asked, concerned. "You look tired."

Buffy waved away her concern. "I had a nightmare last night, then couldn't get back to sleep. It's nothing." She looked at Tara squarely. "He found us together."

"In your dream?" Tara asked, confused.

Drawing a deep breath to steady herself, Buffy explained. "I went patrolling with Sam that night," she said. "She told me a lot about the two of them, and after a while I couldn't take any more, so I blew her off. I . . . went to see Spike. To see if he had any information on the dealer called 'The Doctor' that we were looking for," she added quickly, worried that Tara would misinterpret her reason. "He wanted . . . to be paid for information, and I . . . things got pretty intense," she finished lamely.

The arrival of the server with her coffee spared Buffy for a moment, but once she had left again there was no further protection, and she dove grimly back into her story. "I suppose I was jealous of how the two of them seemed so happy together. I wanted to be with someone . . . even if it was wrong," she admitted at last.

"Riley turned up information that night that Spike was actually the Doctor, and he . . . found us together in Spike's crypt the next morning." Buffy's cheeks burned hot with the remembered shame of that moment. Tara took her hand in wordless sympathy that touched her more than anything she could have said. It was such a relief to finally be able to tell someone.

"I went back the next day and told Spike that we couldn't see each other any more, that it was over. I'd only been using him to make myself feel something," she explained earnestly. "It wasn't right or fair and it had to stop."

Tara was silent for some time, though she didn't release Buffy's hand. She chose her words carefully when she spoke again. "Buffy . . . you can't go through the rest of your life not letting yourself feel anything. It's okay if you enjoy being with him. He does love you."

"I can't love him," Buffy replied. "I can't. And he makes me want to do things . . . that are just wrong," she whispered, afraid of being overheard.

"What two people choose to do together to please each other isn't wrong, Buffy," Tara said quietly.

Buffy belatedly realized that her comment might be interpreted as something of a slur on all unconventional relationships, and she back-pedalled quickly. "I didn't mean-"

"You've become friends over the last few months since you returned," Tara went on, choosing to ignore Buffy's embarrassment, "and when friends move to being lovers, sometimes the intensity of the relationship can be frightening."

"No!" Buffy insisted. "He's not my friend. There's no relationship. I want him out of my life." She removed her hand from Tara's gentle hold. "I want you to put the uninvite spell back on our house," she said. "I know that vampires can always enter public places, but there must be some other kind of spell we can use to keep him away from me if I go out."

Tara shook her head. "Buffy, you can't just make Spike avoid you. It won't do anything to help you deal with how you feel about him."

"For the last time," she replied firmly, "I don't feel anything about him - except the pain in my ass when he's around. I want him to stop bothering me. If you won't help me," Buffy warned, "I'll either do it myself or find someone who will."

Sighing in resignation, Tara said, "I'll come tonight and do the uninvite, at least. That will give you some more time to think about what you actually want."

"I know exactly what I want," said Buffy, getting up from the table and leaving her coffee, untouched, behind her. "I want everything back the way it was."

"You can't force a plant back into a seed, or a person back to what they used to be," Tara murmured. "You can only grow and change, or die." But Buffy was gone.


	3. Uninvited

**Uninvited**

"Earth to Buffy, come in Buffy," Dawn carolled.

Buffy looked up from her magazine, startled. "I'm sorry, Dawn," she said. "Did you just say something?"

"I said I though we should all head to the Bronze tonight," she repeated. "You know, to celebrate that I got the highest mark on the math midterm?"

Buffy did remember promising something like that earlier in the week, but recent events had driven the details from her mind. "On a school night?" she asked.

"You promised," Dawn complained. "I've been so looking forward to this."

Buffy reconsidered her position, since this would be exactly what she needed to get Dawn and Willow out of the house before Tara was supposed to arrive. She wasn't ready to explain why she wanted Spike uninvited from the house again.

"I suppose," she said, trying to sound reluctant. "But I'm not really feeling up to it today, Dawn. You and Willow could go, though."

Dawn's face fell. "We can go another day," she suggested.

"No, I don't want to spoil the celebration. I've been feeling out of sorts lately - I think I may be getting a cold," Buffy said, trying not to overplay it.

"Then you really need a good night out to take your mind off of things," Dawn insisted. "It's not like you have the excuse of being too tired from work now."

"Gee, thanks," Buffy said dryly. "I really needed to remember that I don't have a job anymore." Dawn was almost immediately contrite, but Buffy waved away her apology. She'd only been taken back on probation after the misunderstanding about the ingredients of the DoubleMeat Medley; trying to explain why she had to leave without warning to help Riley hadn't really impressed Lorraine with her reliability. Rather than trying to deal with someone she couldn't count on, Lorraine had fired her - again. Buffy was still planning to go back and plead her case one more time, but hadn't yet worked up the courage.

"You go ahead," Buffy repeated. "The two of you should have a good time, at least. That is, as long as your homework is done and you get back by eleven," she added.

"Done!" Dawn agreed, and ran for her books to prove she was ready to go.

Buffy closed the door softly after waving goodbye to Dawn and Willow as they headed out for their night of fun. She was glad she hadn't had to resort to any huge deceptions to get them out of the way before Tara arrived. And it wouldn't hurt to give them some more time together to keep rebuilding their relationship, she decided.

True to her word, Tara appeared later that evening with the ingredients to perform the uninvite spell. She paused at the door when Buffy opened it. "Is Willow . . .?" she began uncertainly, not yet ready to meet her girlfriend face to face, especially when she was about to perform the very magic that Willow was trying so hard to avoid.

"No," Buffy replied. "She and Dawn are out at the Bronze tonight until at least eleven. Come on in."

Tara moved into the living room and began laying out the supplies for the spell on the table. She didn't waste any time coming to the point. "I'll need you to crumble some of these herbs at all the windows and doors," she said, indicating a small plastic container. "Do that while I recite the incantation." Tara looked up at Buffy. "If you're sure you really want to do this," she added.

"Believe me," Buffy replied. "I've never been more sure of anything." She took up the container of herbs resolutely.

"Hicce verbis consensus rescissus est," Tara said for the last time, as they returned to the front door. She closed the heavy spell book and laid it on the table. "That should do it, if we didn't miss any possible entrance."

"I didn't realize there were so many windows in this house," Buffy said. "But I think we got them all." She sighed. "Now maybe I can relax for a while. Can you stay and have some tea or something?"

Tara agreed, and the two women moved into the kitchen. While Buffy prepared the tea, she told Tara about how well Willow had been doing in avoiding magic, and about how she herself had been working on improving her relationship with her sister - all light and positive topics. It was only when she sat to join Tara at the table that she let the conversation become more serious.

"Did you think about what I asked this afternoon?" she enquired. "About a spell that could keep Spike away from the Bronze and the Magic Box and other places I go?"

Tara frowned. "There are a number of spells that might work, but I think you're making a mistake, Buffy. Refusing to deal with your emotions won't make them go away. The two of you need to get together and talk."

Buffy ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back from her face. "The problem is, every time we're together talking seems to be the last thing on our minds. I want him," she admitted, looking up at her friend. "But it's only me being selfish; wanting to feel alive again. The spell is as much to keep me from hurting him as it is to help me," she ventured.

Tara greeted this new suggestion with the scepticism it deserved, raising her eyebrows and not saying a word.

Buffy felt she had no choice; she went for her most devastating argument. "I need to have this spell done, Tara. If I can't get you to help me, then I'll find someone who will. Maybe I can get Amy . . . or Willow." She let her words trail away.

Tara stood up. "You don't have to go that far," she said coolly. "I'll stop by the Magic Box in the morning for the supplies and cast the spell while I'm there. The Bronze will have to wait until the weekend, if that's all right." Without waiting for an answer, she gathered her belongings and left.

"Tara," Buffy said weakly after she heard the front door close. "I'm sorry." She was ashamed she had deeply hurt someone who cared about her, but she didn't know what else she could have done. She was sure that if she tried to stay away from Spike on her own and failed, she'd feel even worse about herself.

Dumping the cups into the sink to deal with in the morning, Buffy headed up the stairs, hoping that sleep would bring her some peace.


	4. Innocence Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from "Innocence" by Joss Whedon  
> Thanks to **buffyworld.com** for their excellent transcripts of episodes, without which this story wouldn't have been possible.

**Innocence Lost**

 _She wandered aimlessly for what seemed like hours, dry-eyed but entirely hollowed out with grief. Finding herself back at the school after dark had fallen, she sat on the steps near the entrance. Lights beckoned from the interior where Giles and the others would be meeting to decide what to do about the Judge, but she wasn't ready to face them yet. Instead, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself and rocked miserably._

Everything had been so perfect last night. Angel had been a tender and gentle lover, taking care that the momentary pain, the lovely cruelty that ended her girlhood, hadn't surprised her. His cool hands had soothed her when she had burned for him. She thought that nothing could possibly be as wonderful as loving him had been.

And then today he had been so changed. So callous about their night together, passing it off as though it hadn't been one of the most important events of her life. First he'd laughed at her innocence and inexperience with sex, and then he'd practically called her a whore. She didn't know what she'd done wrong.

After chasing her thoughts around the same circle a dozen or more times, she decided she might as well be miserable inside. Maybe the others would now have some idea how they could deal with the Judge and she could think about that instead. She got up to go inside and all the lights in the school went out.

Suddenly afraid, she ran for the door. She arrived just in time to see Angel grab Willow around the throat from behind while Ms. Calendar stood at the other end of the hallway, brandishing a cross. At that moment, Xander also burst through the doors from the student lounge.

"Don't do that!" Xander shouted.

"Oh, I think I do that," Angel replied, and she could hear the same coldness in his voice she had heard that afternoon. She slipped quietly through the doors.

"Angel," Willow choked, as he tightened his grip.

"He's not Angel anymore," Ms. Calendar said. "Are you?"

"Wrong," he replied slyly. "I am Angel. At last." Willow struggled as his grip on her throat tightened.

"Oh my god," blurted Xander.

"I've got a message for Buffy," Angel said menacingly.

She stepped forward into the illumination cast by the school's emergency lights. "Why don't you give it to me yourself?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

Angel spun around to face her, but didn't loosen his grip. "Well, it's not really the kind of message you tell," he threatened. "It sort of involves finding the bodies of all your friends." Willow yelped with pain as his fingers tightened with these words.

This wasn't happening, she insisted to herself. He can't- "This can't be you," she said in anguish.

"Gee, we already covered that subject," he replied sarcastically.

She had to keep trying to reach him. "Angel, there must be some part of you inside that still remembers who you are," she pleaded. Beyond him she saw Xander take the cross from Ms. Calendar and begin sneaking up behind him.

"Dream on, schoolgirl," he said, mocking her. "Your boyfriend is dead. You're all going to join him."

She moved forward, trying desperately to come up with a plan to get him away from Willow. "Leave Willow alone, and deal with me."

"But she's so cute," he said, pinching her cheek hard like some deranged uncle come to visit. "And helpless. Really a turn on."

Behind him, Xander crept closer. She couldn't let him risk himself too, and still hoped she might reach Angel somehow. "Xander, no!" she cried as he was about to attack.

Angel - Angelus - spun around and clouted Xander in the side of the head with his free hand, knocking him to the floor where he lay dazed. "Thanks for the warning, sweetheart," he growled, then he lunged forward and his fangs ripped at Willow's throat. She didn't even have time to scream. Behind her, Ms. Calendar collapsed and shrieked as though Willow's lost scream had been forced out of her instead. Bright arterial blood spurted over them, staining everyone crimson. Willow crumpled to the floor in a spreading pool.

Angelus turned next to her and grabbed her by her shoulders, drawing her near. His face was wet and his breath reeked with fresh blood. "Things are about to get very interesting," he whispered roughly, then forced a kiss on her, smearing her with her friend's life. Shoving her away into the wall, he whirled and was gone.

Xander crawled across the gore-smeared floor to cradle Willow's lifeless body in his arms. "Oh Willow. Oh no," he repeated over and over, out of his mind with grief.

She felt herself sliding slowly down the wall, unable to speak, think, or even to breathe. Great hitching sobs shook her body. If she hadn't tried to stop Xander, if she had been here instead of wallowing in self-pity all afternoon . . . if she hadn't slept with him. Willow's death, and all the destruction Angelus would cause before she stopped him - it was and it would be all her fault.

Buffy woke to a tearing sensation of loss and misery. She hadn't felt this empty and desolate since her mom had died, and maybe not even then, since her mom's death hadn't been her fault no matter how horrible it had been. But in her nightmare, Willow had died directly because of actions she had taken, and she still felt cold with that knowledge.

Despite understanding consciously that it had been only a dream, she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep again until she checked in on Willow. Buffy crept silently down the hall and eased open the door of the master bedroom that Willow had until recently shared with Tara. She let slip a sigh of relief as she heard her friend's slow, regular breathing.

Though she had tried to be as quiet as possible, Willow still stirred from her sleep. "Buffy?" she asked groggily, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Will," she replied. "I just had a bad dream and wanted to see if you were okay. Go back to sleep and I'll talk to you in the morning."

"G'night," said Willow, mostly to her pillow, as Buffy closed the door softly behind her to return to her own room.

 _I hope this isn't going to become a regular event_ , Buffy sighed inwardly as she sat up in bed against her own pillows, waiting for sleep to return. A chilling thought took her. These nightmares weren't prophetic, exactly, since the events in them had already happened - or hadn't, quite. But the way that her memories were being twisted in the dreams was disturbing enough that she resolved to get Willow, Xander and Anya looking into possible mystical disturbances. If the dreams were warnings of something big to come, she wanted to be ready for it.

Having resolved to take action in the morning, Buffy was able to slip back into sleep's embrace at last.


	5. Confrontation

**Confrontation**

Dawn and Willow had agreed to meet Buffy at the Magic Box after their classes that day. With any luck, they would be able to help her determine the cause of the disturbing dreams she'd been experiencing the last few nights. Buffy left home early in the afternoon to be sure to get there before Willow arrived, so her friend wouldn't have to face the temptation of being in the store alone.

If there was one thing she did understand these days, Buffy thought, it was temptation. It would be so easy to go back to Spike and simply give in to the sensual pleasure of his touch. No thinking, no responsibilities, no choices - just sensations. She knew she could go to him and he would welcome her at once. Part of her longed to.

But she also knew she shouldn't. There were too many duties, too many entanglements to be able to give up and walk away from them. Even Spike had chided her for wanting to be 'free of life'. _Wouldn't Giles be proud_ , she thought sourly. _See how well I've learned my lesson about being responsible._

That annoying little bell at the Magic Box rang as she pushed open the door and stepped into the relative cool and dark of the interior. Anya looked up from the counter with her 'customer service' smile plastered widely on, but relaxed when she recognized her friend. Buffy noticed that her hair was yet another shade of the L'Oréal rainbow this week, and wondered if Anya would be able to make up her mind in time for the wedding next month, or if she'd end up striped.

"Hello Buffy," Anya said pleasantly. "What can I get for you?"

"Nothing, thanks Anya," she replied. "I'm just here to meet Willow for a bit of research." Anya wasn't human enough yet to hide her disappointment, or maybe she was _too_ human now. "No, wait," Buffy said, feeling guilty for the many times she and the others had monopolized the shop's resources without any return investment. "What have you got that would help me sleep? I've been having some disturbing dreams lately. Nothing magical, maybe some kind of herbal remedy?" she suggested.

Anya brightened immediately, and began to catalogue the various options. "Well, there are herbal teas, of course - chamomile, mint, jasmine and so on . . . all very soothing and restful. Or if you don't want something to drink, how about a bath infusion? There's lavender . . ."

Buffy let Anya's voice wash over her without taking in more than every other word. She didn't really feel that a solution to her nightmares would be as simple as that, or she would never have asked Willow to return to such a magically charged environment. She hoped they would arrive soon.

"Buffy? You're not listening," Anya noticed at last.

"I'm sorry, Anya," Buffy sighed. "It's been a difficult week. What were you saying?"

"I said that the orris root would probably the best choice - that way you can have a sachet for under your pillow as well." At that moment the bell at the front door rang again. Both women looked up. A young couple had entered the store, and they looked around expectantly.

"We don't have any orris root up here right now," Anya said as she moved to intercept her latest potential customers. "It's in the basement storage, near the preserved entrails. You can go and bring some up. It should be clearly labelled." Then she was off in flying capitalist mode.

 _As long as it's nowhere near any mummy hands_ , Buffy thought with rueful memory. She made her way to the basement access and down the creaking staircase. The condition of the storage space had certainly improved under Anya's management. Jars, boxes and other assorted containers had all been neatly labelled and sorted onto shelves by content and intended uses. While Giles's knowledge of arcane minutiae had been unsurpassed, he really hadn't been very good at inventory, she reflected.

Buffy found the orris root easily, tied into small bundles with brightly coloured ribbons and hung along side a variety of familiar and unfamiliar vegetable products. She had selected two small bunches when a noise behind her made her whirl and duck into the nearest shadows.

Someone was trying to open the gate that led from the basement storage to the sewer tunnels. Buffy peered around a stack of boxes to identify the intruder. She sighed on seeing a familiar face, and stepped into the open. "You can't come in here, Spike," she said.

He stopped fiddling with the lock on the gate and straightened. "Why Slayer, what a pleasant surprise. Come back to work here, have you? Situation that desperate?" he asked, amused. "Maybe you could help me find some more burba weed. I'm all out."

"No. I mean I'm not working here," she clarified. "And no, you can't have anything, because you can't come in. I had Tara put a spell on the store."

"Can't uninvite me from public places, love," he grinned. Opening the gate, he strolled forward, only to collide with an invisible surface.

"Didn't say it was an uninvite spell," she said shortly, watching him struggle to move ahead.

"What the hell is this, Buffy?" he snarled, testing the barrier. "Don't you trust yourself? Have to put up spell barriers any place I might see you because you haven't the guts to face me anymore? Just because you can find a way to keep me from seeing you doesn't change the fact that there's something powerful between us."

"There's nothing between us. Get that through your head. What the hell did you think? That we could grow old together?" she demanded. "Get real."

His lips thinned. "Real? I'll never grow old," he said. "And you? You're likely to die young. Is that real enough for you?"

Buffy was shocked into silence by his harsh words, yet she couldn't deny he was speaking the truth. She was probably already the oldest Slayer ever, which didn't bode well for her future.

"What I don't understand," he continued, his expression becoming more gentle, "is why you won't let yourself enjoy whatever time you do have. You don't have to love me," he said, "but can't you love yourself? Let yourself feel something?"

"You're missing the point, Spike," she insisted. "You may think it's all right if I keep sleeping with you without loving you - but I don't want to become the kind of person that thinks that's okay."

"So what will you be instead?" he inquired. "Someone who will never make a move on happiness because the situation isn't exactly perfect? People make compromises in their lives, pet. It happens all the time."

"Not me," she maintained.

"No, of course not. You might accidentally end up contented then. Face it, Slayer," he went on, "the perfect moment never comes. Life isn't a fairy tale. Take what you can get."

"Things were perfect once," she said softly.

"What, with soldierboy? Now even you have to know you're lying to yourself there - he was never the right one for you." He looked more carefully at her in the low light of the basement. "Don't tell me you're still mooning over Angel. That prancing poof?"

"Don't you dare talk about him," she threatened, her voice dangerously low. "You don't know anything about what we had."

"Yeah, and if he was so perfect, where is he now?" Spike asked, never willing to let a situation lie when he could pick at it some more. "You can polish up your keepsakes and memories as brightly as you like; no one will stop you. Make the past everything you ever hoped for; but you can't live in it - it's dead and it's gone."

He turned away and made his way back into the tunnel. His voice echoed back to her. "I'm not a smart man, pet, but I do know something about people. You've got to make a choice between then and now and decide what you want. Either get busy living for yourself in the present," he said, turning for one last look over his shoulder, "or get busy dying." With that, he vanished into the gloom.

Buffy leaned back against the cold stone of the basement wall and threw her head back. Her hands clenched and trembled with the strength of her emotions, crushing the delicate dried roots. _How does he always manage to get to me?_ she wondered. _I thought I would be stronger than this._

Suddenly, the atmosphere of the shop basement seemed oppressive, and she had to get out. Buffy ran for the stairs and into the store proper, startling Anya and the few customers there. "Something's come up and I have to go," she said breathlessly. "Tell Willow I'm sorry I couldn't wait. Send Dawn home." She was out the door before Anya could reply, heading for home and sanctuary.


	6. School Harder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from "School Hard" by David Greenwalt  
> Thanks to **buffyworld.com** for their excellent transcripts of episodes, without which this story wouldn't have been possible.

**School Harder**

 _She ran through what seemed to be endless empty hallways, desperate to find and destroy the attackers, and abruptly came up behind Spike who had just sent his minions chasing Angel and Xander out one exit._

He paused and tilted his head slightly, in a gesture that seemed strangely familiar. "Fee, fi, fo, fum," he intoned. "I smell the blood of a nice . . . ripe . . . girl." Spike turned and confronted her, his face demonic and cold.

"Do we really need weapons for this?" she asked, challenging him.

"I just like them," he replied, running a hand suggestively down his chest to hook one thumb in his belt, cupping himself. "They make me feel all manly." He threw down the pole he was holding, and she did the same with her axe. Spike began to walk slowly towards her, taunting her. "The last Slayer I killed . . . she begged for her life."

She moved forward as well, never letting her eyes leave him, readying for an attack.

"You don't strike me as the begging kind," he said, as though this compliment could somehow take her off guard.

"You shouldn't have come here," she threatened, still moving towards him.

"No. I've messed up your doilies and stuff. But I just got so bored," he smirked. "I'll tell you what. As a personal favour, from me to you, I'll make it quick. It won't hurt a bit."

"No, Spike," she contradicted. "It's gonna hurt a lot," she said as she swung at his face.

He shook it off and countered with his own swing, but missed. She continued attacking, first with another successful blow to his face, then a sweeping low kick that he easily jumped over. She withdrew a few steps and tried a high kick, but he evaded this one as well. They moved in close again and exchanged a number of blows and parries. Her breath began to be more laboured.

Spike grabbed her by the waist and flung her to the floor. She rolled with it and quickly regained her feet, advancing on him again and going once more for his face. He swung wildly and she ducked under his arm. Her next sequence of blows landed four in succession: backhand left, roundhouse right, uppercut left and a body blow that would have broken ribs and knocked the wind out of a human opponent. Too bad she wasn't so lucky this time.

He grabbed her by one arm and spun her around face-first into the wall. She slid down it, not so much with a plan in mind as instinctively, and his next blow punched through the wall up to his elbow. While he was trapped, she followed up quickly with a spinning kick to his back.

"Now that hurt!" he yelled. Spike pulled his arm back out of the wall forcefully, bringing a section of wall stud with it. He swung it around into her face, sending her flying back onto the floor, stunned. He stood over her, poised to impale her. "But not as much as this will," he mocked, lifting the beam.

A sudden blow to the side of his head knocked him sprawling to the ground. She was shocked to see her mother standing over them, holding her discarded axe in her hands and preparing to swing at him again. "You get the hell away from my daughter!" she yelled.

Spike threw the beam aside and surged to his feet with a roar. With one hand, he seized the axe and flung it spinning and skidding down the hallway. The other hand clutched her mother by the hair, cruelly pulling back her head. Before she could even regain her feet, Spike's teeth had torn into her mother's throat. Blood sprayed out, splattering bright gore over all of them and pooling on the tiles.

"You're next, bitch," he growled, flinging her mother's limp form down at his feet.

"Mom!" she screamed, clutching desperately at her mother's body until Spike's rough hands jerked her away. "Mommy!" she choked in despair, feeling his fingers circling her neck.

"Mom-!" Buffy shouted, sitting up suddenly in bed. Her bedclothes and pyjamas were soaked, and she brought her hands to her face in sudden panic. The movement caused a glass to go tumbling to the floor, and she realized with immense relief that she must have knocked her water glass down onto herself from her bedside table. She could never tell her mom about this dream . . .

Buffy's breath hitched in her throat. Her mom _couldn't_ hear about this dream. Her mom would never hear anything from her ever again. She was surprised at how fresh and sharp the pain was, almost a year later.

She climbed out of bed and retrieved the glass, setting it back on the table. Then she set to work stripping the soaked sheets from the bed and stuffing them into the laundry hamper to deal with later in the week. Even the mattress was damp, she noticed. Buffy went to the linen closet in the hallway and rummaged until she found herself a quilt to replace her wet blankets.

Back in her room, she tucked her feet up in the armchair and wrapped the quilt around herself, trying to get comfortable. "Oh mom," she whispered, tears squeezing from under her closed lids, "I miss you so much."

Morning seemed a hundred years away.


	7. The Turing Test

**The Turing Test**

Willow confronted her at breakfast the next morning. "Anya told me about Tara being in the store to cast an uninvite spell for you. You didn't tell me she'd been here," Willow said in a hurt voice.

"I didn't think you'd want to know," Buffy said. "Since you've been trying so hard to avoid magic and all."

"But not to avoid Tara," Willow protested. "I can't ask her to give up magic just because it makes me uncomfortable - not if I want her back. Eventually I'll have to face it - because the magic isn't going to go away. It's easy to deal with temptation if we get rid of everything in the house - but I can't hide in the house forever."

Buffy shivered. Suddenly this conversation was hitting a little close to home. "Believe me, I know all about temptation, Willow," she said.

"No, I don't think you do," Willow said crossly. "You don't know what it feels like to want something so much that you'll do anything - _anything_ \- to get it."

 _There will never be a better opening . . ._ "I've been sleeping with Spike."

Willow stared, her irritation forgotten. After a minute or two, she noticed that her mouth was open and she shut it with a snap. "You . . . and Spike? That's just . . . wow."

"It's over now, though. After Riley left, I told him I couldn't see him anymore. That's why I needed the uninvite spell," she explained. "It was killing me, Will. He loves me - I can admit that now - but I can't love him. I was only using him to make myself forget for a while; to feel alive again." Willow suddenly found the tabletop intensely interesting, and Buffy sighed. Her friend would always feel guilty about pulling her back out of heaven, but she had hoped Willow would be dealing with it a little better after so long.

Putting aside her concern, she pressed on before she could lose her courage. "But I still want him." Her eyes lost focus as she remembered. Words tumbled from her lips before she could think to hold them in. "It's like he could read my mind - everything I wanted, and some things I didn't even know I wanted at first . . ."

"Buffy," Willow said slowly, "if it was that good . . ."

"No!" she insisted, coming back to herself and horrified that she had given that impression. "This is _Spike_ we're talking about, remember? Tried to kill me several times, tried to kill you, tried to tear us all apart from each other two years ago? And so on, and so on?" Buffy sat back in her chair and stirred her coffee aimlessly. "Though if someone only thought about what he's been like this year . . ." some inner gremlin of honesty forced her to add.

Willow's face grew thoughtful. "Sounds like the Turing test."

"There's a test?" Buffy asked, confused, putting down her spoon. "Nobody said anything about a test. I didn't study!"

"Buffy, the Turing test was a test for artificial intelligence developed in the 1950s by Dr. Alan Turing," Willow explained, laughing.

"Makes sense - his test, he can name it what he wants," she said. Her face was still puzzled. "But what does that have to do with Spike?"

"He - Dr. Turing - said that if you couldn't tell from its responses that you were talking to a computer, then it had intelligence," she clarified. "And it didn't matter that it wasn't human, it was a sentient being. What if we thought about a kind of Turing test - for a soul?" she ventured.

Buffy thought she understood now. "Like, if we can't tell . . ."

"Right. Imagine you'd only ever met Spike a couple of years ago. And - and you've never seen him go all . . . vamp-y. Judging by everything he's done, would you think he was human? 'Cause then we'd assume he had a soul."

"That doesn't work, Will," she protested. "The only reason he hasn't killed anyone is because of the Initiative chip, not because he's gotten to be a better person."

"But don't you see? The reason doesn't matter - you can only judge the behaviour. If he behaves like he has a soul, then it doesn't matter what caused it, you have to say he's got one. _That's_ the Turing test." Willow paused, considering the events of the past two years. "And Buffy? If he wanted to hurt us in ways he could manage without the chip, it would have been easy - you said it yourself, he almost drove us apart a couple years ago. But he's actually helped us, and almost, well, _died_. Because he loves you."

"You sound like you're taking his side," she protested. "Tara was all over me to go talk to him, too. What is this, gang up on Buffy week?"

"I'm not," Willow insisted.

"Could've fooled me. I don't want to talk about this any more, Will. I can't." Buffy pushed away from the table. "I have to get Dawn up or she'll be late again," she said, looking for an excuse to get away.

After waking Dawn, she waited until she heard Willow leave for classes before she came out of her room again.


	8. Gravitas

**Gravitas**

 _Her head hung over the toilet's bowl while she clutched desperately at the rim. She heaved again convulsively, but she was only able to bring up ropy strands of green bile from her abused stomach. At last, when no more spasms seemed imminent, she collapsed in a limp heap in the space beside the toilet. With one hand she reached weakly for the toilet paper to wipe the worst of the mess from her chin and hair. Her muscles trembled with fatigue and her whole body ached from the exertion as though she had been badly beaten._

Slowly she managed to get to her feet, gripping the sink for support, and surveyed the wreck of her appearance in the mirror. Her eyes were both darkly bloodshot, the tiny capillaries having burst at the force of her uncontrollable vomiting. Her hair hung lank, matted with sour, reeking fluid. She'd barely made it into the bathroom - an improvement on last time - but hadn't had the time for niceties like tying her hair back out of the way. For the moment, at least, her body responded again to her demands, rather than the other way around, but overriding all other sensations was a fluttering nausea, delicately poised in her belly to tumble out of control at the slightest wrong move. Or perhaps it was just the overwhelming fear that tormented her so.

Moving with deliberate care, she twisted the faucets and wet a washcloth in the cool water. Even the cloth's roughness as she wiped her face nearly overwhelmed her limited grip on her body's reactions. She paused frequently to take deep, stabilizing breaths, and to rinse out the washcloth.

She'd been feeling ill every morning for most of the last two weeks. At first she simply blamed the sickness on spoiled food. When it had continued, she ascribed it to the stresses of working, slaying and even the upcoming wedding. But she finally had to admit she couldn't fool herself any longer: her period, normally the only reliable rhythm in her life in spite of everything, was now a full five days late.

"This isn't happening," she said to herself for perhaps the hundredth time. Despite her mind's denial, her hands reached of their own accord and opened the medicine cabinet. The little pink, flower-decorated box she retrieved looked entirely too innocent to be associated with this upheaval in her life. Trembling fingers broke the seal and retrieved the slim plastic wand inside. Most of the space in the box was taken up with a much-folded, densely printed set of instructions, which she ignored. "After all, this isn't exactly rocket science," she said, with black humour.

Every one of the sixty seconds the home pregnancy test took to develop seemed longer than the one before it. She was ready to smash in the face of her watch for the insolent way it ticked away the seconds, ever more slowly, taunting her.

But then, when the minute hand had crawled around the dial at last, she couldn't look. There would be no way to step back into relatively comfortable ignorance. Summoning the last of the courage that had seen her through so many world-ending threats, she looked down and forced herself to move her thumb from where it covered the indicator window. The little blue plus sign glared up at her mockingly. Positive.

The wand fell from suddenly numb fingers and shattered into sharp plastic splinters on the tile floor. "No," she whimpered, as the reality of the situation hit her. "There was only Spike . . . and that's not possible. It can't be . . ."

She doubled over again as the cramps suddenly returned with greater intensity than before, tearing her apart from the inside. She clutched blindly for support and grabbed the shower curtain, which tore loose from the curtain rod with a series of rapid-fire pops. She bruised her hip sharply on the edge of the tub as she collapsed, and tumbled to the floor twisted in yards of shiny plastic. "Please-"

"-no!" Buffy woke suddenly to find herself on the floor of her bedroom. Her hip ached where she had hit the floor in her fall from the bed, and she was nearly immobilized by the sweat-soaked sheets wrapped tightly around her. She was thankful for consciousness, though - however abrupt - and the familiar dull throb of her usual menstrual cramps had never before been so welcome.


	9. Fight and Aftermath

**Fight and Aftermath**

Buffy and Willow made their way slowly along the sidewalk towards home that evening. Buffy kicked despondently at a crumpled pop can as they walked back from the DoubleMeat Palace. Lorraine hadn't even begun to listen to her explanation for the events of the previous week; she simply asked her to turn in her uniform again and never come back. Buffy didn't know what was more humiliating; the look of disappointment from her boss, or the pity she saw on the faces of some of her former co-workers. _What kind of a loser am I, if I can't even keep a stupid fast food job?_ "Thanks for being there, Will," she sighed.

"I only wish it could have gone better," Willow said. "If it helps, I was thinking about all the horrible things I could have turned her in to, if I were still doing magic."

Buffy laughed ruefully. "If we're wishing, let's not waste time there - let's have a million dollars. That would solve our problems nicely," she said, climbing the front steps.

"Dawn? We're home," she called as she opened the door. There was no reply, but Buffy heard laughter.

Attracted by the sound, Buffy and Willow headed for the kitchen. Two heads - one dark, one light - leaned together over a number of magazines spread out before them on the kitchen table. Dawn and Spike looked up as they entered. Debris on the counter testified to Dawn's inexpert attempt at producing hot chocolate for both of them. Mini marshmallows were scattered on the counter and floor, some of them squashed under their feet.

Buffy's anger battled for control with the sudden knot in her stomach, courtesy of her most recent nightmares. Spike was the last person she needed to see right now. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Bit invited me in," he replied evenly, getting up from his chair. "I brought some magazines for you. You had said you wanted to redecorate your room, and she thought she might like to do the same." He held up one of the home decor magazines as if to prove his sincerity.

"She had no right."

"Will you stop talking about me like I'm not even here?" Dawn said furiously. "Spike's my friend. If I want to invite him in, I will. I live here too, you know!"

"Buffy, it's my fault," Spike offered. "I really only came to drop off the magazines. I shouldn't have stayed."

"No, you never should have come here at all. What the hell were you thinking?" she snapped.

His face closed up with anger. "I was thinking that I'd do something nice for you. Serves me right for trying, I suppose. I should have known no one would buy it."

"Haven't you done enough to me already? Get out of my house!" When he didn't move fast enough for her liking, she grabbed at his lapels and flung him back into the door. She twisted the knob, hoping he'd tumble out while off balance, but instead, recovered, he shoved her roughly into the island counter. The door gaped open behind him.

Buffy braced herself on the island and brought one leg up in a powerful side kick that hit dead centre on Spike's chest. He tumbled to the floor, but managed to swing around to sweep her legs from under her so she joined him there. He scrambled to his knees in time to stop her from rising again with a backhanded blow to her face. She shook it off quickly and lunged forward to drive one shoulder into his midsection and send him out the door.

Dawn and Willow watched in awe as Buffy's last blow sent Spike sprawling out onto the back deck. He recovered his footing in time to capture Buffy's arm on her next swing, and used it to spin her about and down the steps to tumble on the lawn. He leapt after her, only to be sent head over heels as she brought her legs up to defend herself. She bounced swiftly to her feet to meet him again.

The other two rushed out the door behind them, but could only stand and stare, gripping the railing at the edge of the deck. They both had seen Buffy fighting before, but never in a contest that seemed so evenly matched; every move she made, it seemed Spike had a counter for. They moved together in a deadly choreography across the lawn, trading the lead back and forth between them.

It took several minutes, but finally Buffy had Spike trapped between one of the large trees and the back fence. She groped in her jacket pocket for one of her ubiquitous stakes, and leaned forward to strike.

"Buffy, no!" Dawn screamed, as her sister drew back her arm.

As though she had heard, Buffy froze, giving Spike a moment to grab her upraised arm. She strained in his grip to complete the strike, but then wavered. _This isn't . . . I want . . . I don't want to . . ._

"Kiss me or kill me, Slayer; make up your mind." Spike kept one hand tightly on her wrist until she loosened her grip on the stake. He plucked it from her suddenly nerveless fingers and stowed it in a pocket of his coat, then reached for her other hand.

She abruptly threw herself against him and brought her lips to his. Their mouths fused together.

Spike returned her kiss ardently for some time, but then placed both hands on her shoulders and gently but firmly pushed her away from him. "No. This isn't right."

"What are you doing?" Now she was more confused than ever. She thought this was what he wanted, and she had decided to give in to her own desire.

"What we both know I should. I don't want to end up on the business end of a stake tomorrow when you think of this. Even more, I don't want you to end up feeling what I know you will if we go ahead." He released her and dropped his hands to his sides. "I want you to come be with me because you've decided it's what you need, not only to satisfy a passing fancy."

"This is an impossible relationship," she protested.

"I believe in the impossible. I'm in love," said Spike. He found it telling that Buffy had actually called it a relationship - even as she was protesting it would never happen.

"You're not the right person for me; you can't be," she insisted.

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but finding the imperfect person perfect," he countered.

"What? I . . . you lost me there." Buffy knew she should never have let herself be drawn into conversation with him; he always managed to make the most outrageous ideas seem perfectly reasonable.

"I'm only saying that you have to stop waiting for something that's never going to come; there is no perfect person. I'm far from it - and I'm sure you'd be happy to enumerate my flaws - but I'm the man who wants to make you happy."

"You just want me back in bed with you."

"Of course I want you in my bed, love," Spike grinned. "Can't ever get enough of that."

"What - hours at a time weren't enough for you?" she asked mockingly.

All traces of teasing banter disappeared from his voice, and his eyes suddenly looked right through her. "If I'd had you for a lifetime, Buffy, I'd still be complaining I'd been short-changed."

Her breath rushed out of her as though she had been punched in the stomach. She couldn't speak a word.

"You said you couldn't love me," he went on. "If you meant that it would never be possible, that I'm wasting my time, then maybe you should take this," he pulled the stake from his pocket and folded her fingers around it again, placing the point above his heart, "and end this misery for both of us, now."

Buffy could only stand and stare at the point of the stake where it dimpled his pale flesh. Her fingers tightened, convulsively and unconsciously, and it broke the skin, letting a few ruby drops well up. He hissed an unnecessary breath and closed his eyes, waiting, seemingly resigned. Long moments passed before Buffy finally released the stake and let it fall noiselessly to the grass. Spike's coal-smudge lashes fluttered open, revealing clear blue eyes touched with hope.

"Or . . . if you meant that you needed time, that you just won't _let_ yourself feel anything now . . ." he paused, and took her small hands in his cool ones. "I want you to know - I'll wait. I love you, and I'll wait and hope that maybe someday you'll find it possible to love me."

Now it was Buffy's turn to close her eyes. She turned her head away, but didn't draw back her hands. "What if . . . what if I don't know if it's possible? What if it never happens?"

"Never's a long time, Buffy. Still, I've got nothing _but_ time. Let me spend it on you. I'll wait," he repeated emphatically. Gentle fingertips turned her face back to him. "If you'll let me."

Buffy's breath sighed softly from between her parted lips, and she looked up at him. "Could I stop you?" she asked quietly, at last.

The corners of his mouth turned up and he shook his head. "No. Likely not." He leaned forward, giving her every chance to withdraw. When she didn't retreat, he pressed a tender kiss to the corner of her mouth - the most feather-light touch. "But I'll not trouble you further tonight, then. When . . . if . . . you ever decide, you know how to find me." With that, he released her and shrugged his hands into his pockets, turning to leave without another backward glance.

"Wow," breathed Dawn from where she stood on the deck having taken it all in incredulously. "That was intense."

Buffy laughed shakily. "With Spike, it probably couldn't be anything else," she said. "Have I made a mistake?" she asked her sister and her best friend. "Have I promised him something I won't ever be able to offer?"

"You only promised him that he could wait, Buffy," Willow replied. "Not that anything was guaranteed to happen. But I have to know - what happened to his chip? Has it stopped working?" Her forehead creased with worry at what that might mean for the rest of them.

"It seems as though the spell that brought me back changed things just enough that the chip doesn't work with me," Buffy explained. "He can't hurt anyone else." Willow and Dawn both looked relieved.

"And when were you in bed with Spike?" Dawn demanded.

"I suppose you really should know," Buffy sighed. "It's a long story."

"Do I look like I'm going anywhere?" Dawn retorted.

Buffy just smiled a small smile, and began thinking how she might edit the content on the fly to a more PG-13 version. "I guess it started last year . . ."


	10. The Incident on Patrol

**The Incident on Patrol**

"Hello, love." The familiar, cheeky voice rang out clearly across the cemetery.

Buffy sighed inwardly and stopped, shifting her bag of weapons to a more comfortable position on her shoulder. She turned to face him.

"Come for a bit of a visit, pet?" Spike asked with an optimistic grin. "Made up your mind already, have you?" He perched on a handy tombstone like some scruffy crow.

"No . . . and no!" Buffy replied vehemently. "I thought you said you were going to stop bothering me."

"I said I'd wait for you to decide what you felt about me," he reminded her. "And here you are only a few days later, coming 'round to see me."

"I am _not_ coming around to see you," she replied, flustered. "This is my job, remember? Patrolling?"

"Mmm-hmm," he murmured, unconvinced. "Sunnyhell has how many cemeteries? I only live in this one. You know that I'd take care of things here for you, yet here you are again. So tell me what _should_ I think?"

"We are _not_ having this conversation again," she insisted, moving away briskly.

"I don't know how to break it to you pet, but it seems we are," he said, jumping down from the tombstone to stride in step with her.

"What part of no did you not understand?" Buffy asked, turning aside.

"I've heard it from you before," he replied, moving quickly to cut her off, his duster swirling about his legs. "It could be the way you always make it mean 'convince me'. Why should this time be any different?

"You said it yourself - you like the things I do to you. You like the way I make you feel. Who else is going to give you what you want? What you need?" He smiled, recalling satisfying memories. "Hell, who else can take what you dish out when you let go?" Spike looked at her speculatively. "Didn't you ever worry you might crush poor soldierboy's ribcage? Had to hold back all the time with him, didn't you? In work, at play . . ."

"That's not a basis for a relationship - just the fact that we're . . . physically compatible," she protested awkwardly.

"But holding yourself back is? Having to lie to poor Captain Cardboard about what makes you feel good - and don't try to tell me you didn't," he admonished, seeing her about to retort. "The things you do . . . that we do . . . you never did with him."

"Did," she interjected. "Things we _did_. Emphasis on past tense here."

He spread his hands as though to let her objection slip free. "As you wish, pet. But no human boy, however brawny, is going to be able to satisfy you."

Buffy closed her eyes in exasperation. "Can we _not_ discuss my sex life in a public graveyard?"

"Fine. Come back with me and we'll have all the privacy you could want," Spike offered with a devious smile.

"No!"

" _No_ no? Or 'I want to be talked into it' no?" he asked, moving forward and running his hands from her waist down, tracing the swell of her hips.

"How about an 'I'll break both your arms if you don't stop now' no? Clear enough?" she asked, stepping back out of his reach. "If you must know, I'm here tracking a demon that terrorized a bunch of people back at the park. It headed this way, but I lost it just before you turned up."

"Ah. And you only remember this now?" he smiled. "Convenient, pet, I must say."

"Well I would have said something sooner," she jibed, "but someone was going out of his way to be annoying and I had to deal with that first. Are you going to make yourself useful, or do I have to go back to the 'arm-breaking' part?" she asked.

"Not the sort of rough-and-tumble I was hoping for," he sighed with mock disappointment, "but better than nothing. Let's go kill your demon, then."

Having arrived at this semblance of a truce, Buffy and Spike set off together through the cemetery, looking for signs of the demon's presence. It didn't take them long; uprooted vegetation and shattered monuments provided clear evidence of its passage.

"It's making this too easy," Buffy murmured. "Typical demon; long on destruction, short on thinking skills." She glanced sideways at Spike to see if he had registered this jab.

"You just aren't willing to spend time with the right sort of demon, pet," he offered. "We have all sorts of talents you don't appreciate. Despite everything, you're still sadly ignorant of some of my better qualities."

"Better qualities?" she snorted. "I've _seen_ you naked. Maybe I should threaten to break your jaw, rather than your arms, if only to shut you up for a while," she continued, slipping back into the more comfortable relationship of insult and counter.

"Just because you want to shoot the messenger doesn't make the message untrue," Spike replied, unwilling to let her take the easy way out of the conversation.

Buffy stopped abruptly and turned to face him, bracing her hands on her hips. "Listen," she said, "let's get something straight here-Look out!" She grabbed the lapels of Spike's duster and hauled him with her roughly to the ground. Demon claws split the air where he had been standing moments before.

Buffy regained her footing and thrust forward, driving one shoulder hard into the demon's midsection. It staggered back, and she followed up with a spinning kick directed at its head, but the demon recovered quickly enough to grab her leg and used this hold to send her sprawling into the brush.

During the momentary distraction, Spike had scrambled to his feet again and now leapt for the demon's back, getting one arm around its throat in a chokehold and squeezing tightly. The demon tossed its head and roared, scattering stringy yellow spittle all around, before throwing itself backward into a tree and knocking Spike loose, dazed.

"Spike!" Buffy yelled, rushing forward to attack again. "Get the axe from my bag!" He shook his head to clear the ringing, and saw the bag where it had fallen. He lunged for it in a diving roll as the demon swung at him again. Freeing the axe, he tossed it underhanded to Buffy, who caught it and spun to strike all in one fluid move. Thick yellow-white fluid - more like pus than blood - began to leak from where the blade had split the demon's warty hide.

"Okay, officially grossed-out now," Buffy complained, drawing her arm back for another blow. "Doesn't anybody just have ordinary blood anymore?"

Spike rooted around in the bag for another edged weapon. Finding none, he cursed, then pulled out the pistol crossbow and loaded it. He took careful aim at the demon's back and fired. It howled in outrage and clutched at the bolt that now protruded from its back, giving Buffy another chance to attack.

In a black van parked a few hundred yards from the cemetery entrance, Warren, Andrew and Jonathan watched the monitors closely as their plan unfolded. It had been Warren's idea - more and more of their plans seemed to be _his_ plans these days - but Andrew had agreed readily. He had summoned the L'wuxxan demon that Buffy was now fighting. It had been a lure to bring her into this part of the cemetery where they had hidden a number of their miniature surveillance cameras.

Warren turned to look at Jonathan. "It's your turn, magic man. Shake that magic bone, or whatever you have to do," he prompted with a grin.

"This spell doesn't use the bone," Jonathan replied testily, "and I'm still not sure this spell functions exactly like we think it does. I wish you had let me have a few more days to research it."

"What's to be sure about?" interjected Warren. "You cast the spell, the Slayer gets a bad set of nightmares for a few days, and she's off our backs so we can carry out our heist."

"Yeah, Jonathan," added Andrew, "I did my part, so now you have to do yours."

"Don't rush me," he complained. "And what do we do about Spike?"

"When the Slayer goes down, the demon will probably take care of him and then that's one less person we have to worry about," said Warren. "Just do it."

Frowning, Jonathan lit a stick of pungent incense and sat before the mystic symbols he'd inscribed on the floor of the van. "Dominus insomnii," he intoned carefully, "occisora aegresco . . ."

Warren and Andrew bent forward eagerly to the monitor screens to watch the results of the spell unfold.

Back in the graveyard, the battle wasn't going as planned.

"Bloody hell!" complained Spike, throwing down the crossbow. "Doesn't he know he's supposed to be dead already?" Half a dozen bolts feathered the demon's back and it was bleeding from twice as many cuts, yet it fought on.

"Is this your idea of an under appreciated demon talent, Spike?" Buffy gasped out between heaving breaths. "Because I really could have done without this particular example." Gripping the axe more firmly with two hands now befouled with the demon's thick blood, she moved forward for yet another attack. "Do you think you might-" Her words were cut off suddenly as she pitched forward face-first to the ground at the demon's feet.

"Buffy!" Spike shouted, seeing her fall. He raced forward and slammed bodily into the demon, knocking it away from her long enough for him to retrieve the axe. He stood spread-legged over Buffy's body and braced for the next attack.

The demon swung a clawed hand wildly, ripping his scalp open from his temple to just behind his ear. Blood flowed freely, obscuring his vision. His head rang with the force of the blow, but he managed a return swing with the axe. When it failed to connect, the momentum of it almost tipped him over. Struggling for balance, he fell to one knee, unknowingly saving himself from another blow to the head. Spike forced himself to his feet once more, determined to keep the demon away from Buffy. Another wild swing with the axe, and it stumbled back. Its movements began to be less certain at last, as the effects of its injuries finally took their toll on the huge body.

"About bloody time, too," Spike muttered, moving in for the kill. He leapt for the demon again, clutching it around the neck with one arm while with his other hand he used the axe as a giant knife, sawing raggedly at its throat. Sheets of thick blood cascaded down the demon's chest until finally it toppled motionless to the dirt.

Dropping the axe and lurching back upright, Spike staggered over to Buffy. He sighed in relief as he heard the strong, regular sound of her heartbeat. He ran his hands quickly over her, wiping the gore away; no bones seemed to be broken, and there were no signs of any head wounds. He shook her and shouted her name repeatedly, to no avail. He was at a loss to explain why she was unconscious, but he knew where he could get help.

"Come on, love," he said gently, lifting her into his arms. "I'll get you home."


	11. The Wait Begins

**The Wait Begins**

Spike let Buffy's limp body slip from his shoulder as he reached the front door of her house. Balancing her against him and supporting her with one arm, he pounded the door with his free hand. "Dawn! Willow! If one of you isn't down here in ten seconds, I'm kicking the bloody door in!" he yelled.

Lights went on at the top of the landing and soon he saw the two women making their way down the stairs. Dawn reached the door first and peered out anxiously. Willow held back, grim-faced, determined to muster a magical defence if necessary and to hell with the consequences.

Dawn's eyes widened as she identified the two figures outside; Buffy hung loosely in Spike's grip, clearly unconscious - or worse, she feared. The vampire himself didn't appear to be in much better shape, sporting several contusions and scrapes. Blood matted his blond hair above one ear and trailed down his face and neck.

"Spike!" she exclaimed as she opened the door. "What happened? What's wrong with Buffy? Is she-?" Dawn couldn't finish the thought, as though putting it into words might somehow make it come true.

"I can tell you what I saw," he said, as he lifted Buffy again into his arms to carry her inside. "But I don't know what it means. As to your second question, I was hoping Red here," he jerked his chin up, indicating Willow where she stood by the stairs, "would be able to help me with that." He looked at Dawn levelly. "She's alive, Bit. But I don't know what caused this, and I don't know why I can't wake her."

Willow came forward, clutching her floral print dressing gown more tightly about herself. "Put her on the couch," she directed, pushing back the coffee table.

Spike knelt in front of the couch and gently deposited Buffy's unconscious form, straightening her legs and folding her arms over her. He smoothed the tangled strands of hair back from her brow and whispered, "I'll make it right, love. Somehow." He twisted around and looked up at Willow. "You brought her back last year from something like this when Glory had captured Dawn. You can do it again." His expression said that he wouldn't take no for an answer.

"I'm not sure it's the same situation as it was then, Spike," she replied, gathering her thoughts.

"She's dreaming," said Dawn, suddenly. "Look! Her eyes are moving." Willow and Spike leaned forward to see for themselves.

"Your eyes move when you dream?" Spike asked.

"It's called REM sleep - for rapid eye movement," Willow explained to him, glad for the momentary distraction of being able to slip back into what she thought of as _eduspeak_. "It has to do with a certain level of consciousness . . . though the associated brain wave patterns were discovered probably quite a while after you were in school, I suppose," she added, almost apologetically.

"If it's just dreaming, then why can't I wake her?" Spike demanded, having quickly lost patience with her lecture and turning back. "Buffy? Buffy, love, come on - it's time to wake up." He popped the palm of his hand briskly against her cheek. "Rise and shine, greet the day and all that." When she didn't respond, he gripped her shoulders and shook her vigorously.

"I don't think-" Willow began.

"Slayer!" he roared, and drew back one hand to bring it down with a resounding crack across her face.

"Spike!" Dawn cried in alarm, clutching at his wrist with both hands as he drew back again. "You're hurting her!"

"Slayer c'n take it," he growled. "We've done more than that, us two, just playing at-" he bit off his words suddenly, remembering to whom he was speaking.

"Ewww." Dawn wrinkled her nose. "TMI, Spike." He quirked a brow. "Too much information," she added, at his puzzled glance.

"I know you're afraid for Buffy, Spike, but this is not helping her," Willow admonished. "We can't do anything until we know exactly what's happened."

He rose to his feet and stood over her menacingly. "Then do something, witch. Work your mojo and figure it out."

Behind him, Buffy moaned and twisted on the couch. Her forehead was beaded with sweat and her cheeks flushed angry red. Dawn bent and ran her hand over her sister's heated skin. "It sounds like the dreams are really nightmares," she said fearfully.

"She's been complaining of nightmares for the last few days," Willow reported. "I thought it was just, you know, the stress of having to work at the DoubleMeat and then - seeing Riley again, well - she took finding out he had gotten married kind of hard . . ."

"Tell me something I don't know," murmured Spike.

"Willow . . ." Dawn began.

"Do _something_ ," Spike finished for her, in a small voice completely unlike his usual brash tones. "Please."

"I don't - I don't do magic anymore. I can't," Willow stammered.

"You picked a bloody great time to stick to principles," Spike protested. "If you won't, then get someone here who will," he demanded. "Now!"

"Please Will," Dawn chimed in. "Buffy needs help."

"I'll call Tara," Willow said suddenly and resolutely, "She should be able to figure out what's happened." She headed for the kitchen phone; glad to be able to take some action.

Spike and Dawn stood at a loss for something to do. "Spike," said Dawn into the silence at last, taking his hand, "I'll stay with Buffy. Why don't you go upstairs and get cleaned up? It's probably going to be a long night."

He dropped his head. "Five minutes and I'll be back down," he agreed, resigned, and moved for the stairs. "You call me if anything changes, mind."

"I will," she assured him. "Go on, you look terrible."

"Matches how I feel, then." He shrugged out of his battered duster and left it folded over the banister before climbing the staircase.

In the upstairs bathroom, Spike leaned both hands against the mirror frame and stared intently - at the wall of the room behind him. He wondered just how many hundreds of times the mirror had contained her reflection, though it could never contain his. The scent of her in the room drove him nearly to distraction, so he ran a sink full of hot water, and then used his cupped hands to sluice it over his face and head. The water in the basin became tinged with pink as he rinsed the worst of the clotted blood from his hair. The heat of the water warmed his chill flesh, but did nothing to ease the cold inside. He was lost in contemplation when a sudden sound at the door made him whirl about, scattering shining drops from his skin and hair.

"I'm sorry," Dawn said softly, "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Good thing my heart's already stopped," he complained, gruffly but not unkindly. "Is she-?"

"No change. Willow is with her now, and Tara's on the way. Since there's nothing else we can do right now, I thought I'd see if you needed any help." She smiled. "Is this your idea of washing up? Pouring hot water over yourself?"

"Cures a remarkable variety of ills, Niblet," he replied, "if properly applied."

She glanced speculatively at the mirror, then back at him. "You can't even tell that you missed a spot. Here-" She wet a washcloth and wiped gently at the remaining bloodstains. "How do you shave?" she wondered out loud.

He snorted mirthless laughter. "I'm a man of many talents," he said as he towelled himself dry.

Dawn drained the water from the sink, and then opened the medicine cabinet to retrieve some gauze and a bottle of alcohol, which she applied to the gauze liberally. She dabbed at the gash on Spike's temple.

"Hey!" He drew back sharply at the sting. "What is that stuff?"

"It's only alcohol, Spike," she answered, smiling. "Don't be such a big baby about it."

"I am not being- Besides, alcohol's for drinking, not for pouring over my bloody head," he retorted.

"Actually, this alcohol _is_ just the thing for your 'bloody head'," said Dawn, mimicking his accent - badly. "You want that cut to get infected?" She attempted to apply some more, but Spike caught her hand.

"Ow! I appreciate the thought, Niblet, I do, but I doubt that there are too many little beasties that would find me an appetizing meal. Let it be. I heal quickly." He slipped one arm around her for a brotherly hug. "Let's get back."

Willow met them at the bottom of the stairs. "Tara's coming," she confirmed, "but it may be a while before she can manage to find a ride from campus with all the stuff she'll need to bring." She turned back to the living room. "Buffy seems to become more agitated if there's no one near her, so I think we should take turns staying with her until Tara gets here." As if in agreement, Buffy moaned and tossed her head until Willow had moved back to her side.

"There's no need," Spike said. "I'll stay with her. You two should get some sleep."

"Like _that's_ going to happen," Dawn replied, sitting on the couch and taking Buffy's head into her lap. "I'll stay too."

"Me too," added Willow. "You know, in case you need something."

Spike acknowledged their support with a nod. He lowered himself to the floor beside the couch and hugged his knees to his chest. Taking Buffy's hand, he brought it first gently to his cheek, and then interlaced his fingers with hers. He settled his weight back against the couch and dropped his chin to his chest as though to defy anyone to shift him from his chosen position.

Willow composed herself into one of the armchairs and all three descended into silent waiting, broken only occasionally by Buffy's murmurs.


	12. Tara Investigates

**Tara Investigates**

Hours later, they sat in a circle on the living room floor and watched Tara as she sat deep in a trance state. The room flickered with candlelight and was filled with the odour of incense and sharp herbs. Her lips moved from time to time, but no one, not even Spike, could make out what she was saying. Willow was beginning to think her girlfriend had become lost in the dream state when Tara opened her eyes suddenly and took several deep, gasping breaths.

"What is it?" Spike demanded. "What did you see?"

She blinked a few times and shook her head to clear the disturbing images from it. "You were right," she said, "Buffy is having nightmares - and there seems to be some presence holding her there, not letting her wake up. Please understand," she insisted softly, "that with these simple tools, I can only get a glimpse of what she's experiencing. It's like using a television with poor reception versus being at a live show," she explained. "I haven't known Buffy as long as any of you, but it seemed to me she was reliving things that had happened to her in the past - unpleasant things."

"Well that could be practically anything in the last five years," said Willow, not really joking, "which doesn't really narrow it down at all . . ."

"It's not even as simple as that, Willow," Tara continued. "These dream memories are being twisted somehow to be worse than the actual events." She looked at Spike. "I saw you in her dreams. You were in a school, and . . . you killed her mother. And we know that's not true."

"Actually," he replied, obviously shaken, "she hit me with an axe, and ran me off. Never met a Slayer who had friends and family before. Joyce was quite the lady. I should have realized where Buffy got her strength."

Tara turned to Willow next. "I saw you die in one of her nightmares, Willow. A vampire tore your throat out . . ." her voice failed her suddenly.

"It's not real, sweetie," Willow reached for her hand to comfort her. "I'm still here, see? I mean, sure, I've been threatened a few times, but Buffy always came through for me in the end."

"But it _is_ real for Buffy, don't you see? I think that these nightmares all represent times in her life when people she loved were at risk, only now she fails them, and they die. And every time that happens, she gets weaker, and less able to resist the images. Something is feeding on her fear and horror, and if we can't stop it - she'll die."

"Then we stop it. Now," Spike stated flatly. "What do we have to do?"

"I'm . . . not sure, yet," Tara apologized. "I need time to consider some ideas. This is far beyond anything I've ever dealt with before."

Spike surged to his feet and slammed his fist into the wall in frustration. "How much time?" he demanded. "She can't wait. You said it's killing her."

"Spike, we will bring her back. I promise you." Tara's voice was warm and strong, but she looked beseechingly at Willow.

"I think we all need a break," Willow offered as a distraction. "Why don't I make some coffee or something?"

"Buffy doesn't get a break," Spike observed quietly.

"I'll help you, Will," said Dawn, getting up from her seat on the floor. "Tea for you, Spike? I think we have a few teabags left." When he didn't acknowledge her, Dawn gave up and followed Willow into the kitchen. Once they were alone, Dawn ventured to speak her fears aloud. "What if we can't find anything?"

"We will," Willow assured her. "You and I and Tara will go to the Magic Box first thing and make with the research. We'll have the answer in no time." But her worried expression belied her cheerful tone.

"I hope so," said Dawn, fishing in the canister for a teabag as Willow put the coffeemaker on and plugged in a kettle for the hot water. "But I'm afraid-"

"Afraid of what? Being late for school? You should be." Xander's sudden appearance at the back door drew a small shriek from Willow. Dawn jumped and scattered teabags across the counter. "Look at you," he complained. "You're not even dressed yet, and we have to get going in five minutes."

"School! I had no idea it was so late already. Willow, you have to call me in sick today!" Dawn exclaimed. "I can't possibly go!"

"What's going on?" Xander inquired. "Is there a test? I could never get my mom to call me in sick on test days."

"Xander, it's Buffy." Dawn explained. "She was attacked on patrol last night. Spike brought her home."

"Oh my god!" he exclaimed. "Is she going to be okay? Where is she?"

"Xander, calm down. We're already doing everything we can," Willow said. "It was a magical attack, not physical. It seems to be some kind of spell that has trapped her in a nightmare world. Tara's here and soon we'll have a plan to deal with it. In the mean time," she added, "We should all try to carry on as normally as possible."

"Is that why you're putting salt in the cups, Will?" he inquired mildly. "Because I know that's the latest trend in all the best coffeehouses."

"What? Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing the cups in front of her as if for the first time. "I didn't say it would be easy," she replied, grateful for the moment's light humour. She quickly poured out the salt and wiped the cups clean. Just then the coffeemaker emitted the wheezing gurgle that signalled it was done.

"Let me get that," Xander offered. "I'll stay until there's some news. I don't think I could concentrate today - I might put a nail through my boot or something." He poured out coffee evenly into the cups and replaced the pot. "I'll just call the worksite and tell them I've got a family emergency. And Anya should know, too. Should I have her come over?"

"I think she can be more help there. See if she knows anything about demons associated with nightmares. Tell her we'll be in almost as soon as she opens, and we'd appreciate any advance work she can do," Willow requested.

"Will do," replied Xander, heading for the phone.

"Would it be too weird if I said I felt like having some cookies?" interjected Dawn suddenly in a worried tone, while she poured hot water into a thick white mug over one of the salvaged teabags.

"That's not weird at all, Dawnie," Willow reassured her. "When your body gets all stressed, carbohydrates and fats help keep you calm. That's why we get cravings sometimes. And the comfort of familiar foods is a big plus. Me, I want my Grandma Rosenberg's matzo ball soup - but cookies will do for now." Dawn dared a small smile, and Willow squeezed her shoulder. "Everything's going to work out fine, sweetie. You'll see." They placed the cups and a plate of cookies on a tray and headed back to the living room, where they distributed the bounty.

"Here's your tea, Spike," Dawn said, offering him the mug. He inspected the dusty teabag bobbing forlornly in the hot water, and waited until Dawn had turned away before setting it down untouched on a side table.

When Xander entered, he cast an unenthusiastic glance at Spike who had taken up Dawn's former post on the couch with Buffy's head cradled in his lap. "What's he still doing here?" he asked.

"Spike was with her when she was attacked," Willow explained. "He may be able to help us narrow down what's happened. Besides, now that the sun's up, he can't leave." Xander accepted the explanation without grace, but also without further comment.

By unspoken agreement, they kept their conversation to light topics as they ate and drank. Tara related the latest of Miss Kitty's adventures. Willow even managed to produce weak laughter from the group as she described the peculiarities of one of her professors. Dawn described the latest pair of shoes she wanted, though a momentary uncomfortable silence fell when Willow commented how she was 'just like her sister.' Xander rescued the conversation by describing plans for his upcoming wedding, but from his tone it seemed as though it rated not far below the current situation in angst. Only Spike remained silent - the skeleton at the feast - stroking Buffy's hair with a gentle hand to soothe her when she was disturbed.


	13. The Scoobies Make Their Plan

**The Scoobies Make Their Plan**

"I have an idea that might work," Tara declared, when the cookies had been reduced to nothing but crumbs and the cups nearly drained. Everyone looked up at her expectantly. "We can send someone after her. Anchored here, but projected into her dreams, to find her and guide her back."

"Tell me what I have to do," Spike said immediately.

"Now hold on a minute," Xander protested. "Who said it would be you? I don't think you understand-"

"You don't think at all, so far as I've been able to determine," Spike retorted. "In fact-"

"Stop it, both of you," Willow scolded. "Let Tara explain."

Tara favoured her with a grateful glance. "It has to be someone close enough to her to form the mental bond, and who is strong enough to survive being plunged into her nightmares." She paused for a sip of her cooled coffee before continuing. "I haven't known her for as long as all of you have, but in any case, I'll be the one performing the linking spell. So it will have to be one of you," she concluded, looking at four equally concerned faces around the room.

They exchanged silent glances. Dawn was the first to speak. "The monks . . . made me, using Buffy as a pattern. I've got to be closer to her than anyone. And I've lived through plenty of awful stuff. I think I could take it."

"That's true, Dawnie," Tara replied. "But that very closeness might make you a target as well. The demon or sorcerer or whatever has caused this might find you equally appetizing." Dawn shivered at the thought.

"I guess I know Buffy the best," offered Willow next. "There isn't anything we haven't been able to talk about in the last five years - well, except recently," she had to admit. "I know I'm strong . . ." She was unable to finish her sentence.

"But you're afraid you might find it too hard to keep from using magic," Tara said sympathetically. "That it would control you instead of you controlling it, and put you both in danger."

Willow nodded, with a discomfited smile. "I wish more than anything that I could help somehow. I just don't think I dare to do it."

"I guess that leaves me," Xander said. "I've known Buffy just as long as Willow has, and I don't have any trouble with magic to worry about. That, plus my memories of being 'army guy' and my abilities with tools should make me the natural choice."

"So when you get there you'll build her a credenza?" Spike suggested mockingly, rolling his eyes. "That'll be useful."

Tara turned to look at him. "We haven't heard from you yet," she pointed out.

"Spike?" Xander laughed sharply. "You're joking. How could he possibly be the right one to send?"

"I'm in love with her," Spike said simply. "It _should_ be me. And I'm stronger than any of you."

"Stronger physically, maybe," Xander countered. "Which may not mean a thing in her dreams. And just because you were obsessed with her doesn't mean she felt any connection to you."

Spike fixed him with a cool stare. "She was sleeping with me," he disclosed. "I think you'll find that will do for your connection."

Xander stared open-mouthed at him for long moments before finding his voice again. Not one of his friends had shown any signs of surprise at what to him was a shocking revelation. "You knew? You all knew?" he cried, looking from one to another in turn.

Spike shook his head. "Now I know why you became a carpenter, Harris. You're thick as a plank. You were there and you couldn't tell." Xander just stared at the vampire blankly. "Pushups, for crying out loud?" Spike reminded him.

"Oh god. Oh god!" Xander hyperventilated.

Spike ignored this hysterical display, though on a better day would have delighted in tormenting him even more. He addressed Tara with his next words, baring his heart to her because he knew it would be her judgment that decided the matter. "I've never felt for anyone, not even Dru, what I feel for Buffy. She inhabits my every waking moment; lives in my dreams. There's nothing I wouldn't do if I thought it would help her." He looked down at Buffy's troubled face before continuing. "She's more precious to me than water in the desert, because she recreates me a better man than I ever dreamed I'd become - though she doesn't know it." His measured words fell like stones into a deep well of silence.

"She doesn't love me," he felt forced to add, knowing that nothing but the naked truth would do. "But when she's cut, I bleed." He looked up, meeting Tara's gaze and pleading with more than words. No one spoke, waiting for her to render her decision. Finally, she nodded at Spike.

"So when do I go?" he asked, relieved beyond words.

"I can probably find the right spell and all the appropriate ingredients and equipment within the day," she said. "But the barrier between the waking world and the dream world isn't easily broken. We'll have the best chance if we wait until it's thinnest, on the night of the new moon. Three days," she clarified.

"Three-?" he choked off the words, knowing that Tara was simply telling him the truth. "I'll take her upstairs, then, and make her comfortable. Until you're ready."

"We'll start planning right away," she promised.


	14. Xander Confronts Spike

**Xander Confronts Spike**

Spike shifted on the couch until Buffy was balanced in his lap, and then came smoothly to his feet with her in his arms, cradled against him. He took the stairs slowly, afraid of disturbing his precious cargo. Behind him, Willow, Dawn and Tara began gathering their belongings, preparing for their trip to the Magic Box.

At the top of the stairs, Spike paused for a moment. He'd often pictured the day when he might actually enter Buffy's room at her invitation. Pushing the thought aside with some regret, he shouldered open the door. Although her bed was made, it was strewn with a variety of pillows, stuffed animals and clothing, leaving him to wonder how she ever made room to sleep in it. Dumping things unceremoniously to the floor, he laid her tenderly on the bed.

He unlaced first one shoe, then the other, slipping them from her feet like some contrary Prince Charming. Her socks were next, these he stuffed into the shoes where he had set them on the floor. He ran his hand slowly up one denim-clad leg, tracing the sinuous curve of the strong muscles in her calf and thigh until he reached the button at her waist. As he opened the fly of her jeans and slipped his hands under the waistband, he couldn't help but bring to mind the last time he'd had the opportunity to touch her so. He found it hard to believe that happy occasion had been little over a week ago.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Xander demanded from where he suddenly stood in the doorway.

"Making her comfortable," Spike replied evenly, drawing Buffy's jeans over her hips. He slipped them off, leaving her clad only in tank top and panties, then lifted her to bring the comforter out from under her and tuck her in. "Thought I explained that downstairs."

"You can't expect me to just stand here in her bedroom watching you take her clothes off," Xander protested.

"That's exactly what I expect, though a gentleman wouldn't watch," Spike replied. "What part of 'she's been sleeping with me' did you not understand? Aside from being here in her bedroom, none of this is exactly new territory for me." He drew the covers over her and plumped the pillow under her head. "She and I have been lovers for a few months, now." He saw no need to mention that Buffy had only recently called it off - in any case, he was certain she wouldn't have apologized about it if she didn't have _some_ feelings for him - and it was certainly none of Harris's business. "I imagine I know things about her you've never dreamed of."

Xander's face flushed an embarrassed red; perhaps he _could_ dream of those things, Spike thought. "Maybe you can fool the girls by spouting romantic drivel like that stuff downstairs; I know you've got some scheme in mind," Xander accused. "I'm not going to stand by and let you get your jollies while Buffy's unconscious."

"I'm here because Buffy needs someone to stay with her to keep her calm. And I'm only still speaking to you as though you might be civilized because she cares about what happens to you, though for what reason I'm having trouble comprehending," Spike snapped. "So take yourself off, before I throw you out."

"And how will you do that, Spike?" he retorted. "You so much as touch me and that chip in your head will leave you whimpering like a baby. "

"You're nothing but a schoolyard bully, aren't you Harris? Does it comfort you, knowing I can't hurt you? Let you act the man? I'd be more than happy to give it a try, you know."

"I don't need help from the chip to deal with you." Xander turned to Buffy's desk, where he knew she kept some of her weapons and other anti-vampire paraphernalia, and retrieved a simple wooden cross. Brandishing the cross in front of him, Xander advanced on Spike. "Get away from her."

Spike flinched at the cross, but didn't retreat. Keeping his face turned away, he moved forward slowly, instead. "You're the one who's getting married soon," he said. "You should know what it feels like to be in love. When you look at her, you can't imagine being without her. Everything you do takes on a different meaning when you know what she thinks of it.

"Or maybe you're not so sure anymore?" he probed, looking for weakness. "Because if you were in love, _really_ in love, you'd know-" Moving faster than the eye could follow, Spike seized the cross, trapping Xander's hand as well. Behind him, Buffy moaned and began to thrash about in the bed. Acrid smoke rose between them as Spike's skin began to crisp and blacken, but he refused to relent. "-You'd know that nothing . . . else . . . matters." With each word, he tightened his grip, until the wood of the cross snapped and fell to the floor. "Now get out."

Clutching his own wounded hand, Xander backed to the door. His face bore the expression of a man who was being forced to contemplate unpleasant truths. "Spike, I-"

Spike dragged the armchair over to beside the bed and collapsed into it, cradling his now useless left hand in his lap. With the other, he reached for Buffy and encircled her wrist gently. She quieted against her pillow again and he felt her pulse slow somewhat, though it was still faster than he would like.

"She came to me," he said, not bothering to look up again. "Every time. You might want to ask yourself what she wasn't getting from her friends. Besides the great sex, I mean."

Xander left without another word, closing the door softly behind him. Spike threw his head back in the chair and let the pain of his hand wash over him, whiting out, however briefly, the sharper pain inside.


	15. Devotion

**Devotion**

Spike marked the passage of the hours with the changing angle of the shadows against the blinds. He had moved from the chair exactly once: to close the blinds against the advancing day. Having no human bodily needs to trouble him, he remained in the chair within arm's reach of Buffy, alternately dozing and waking as her restlessness or the twinges of pain from his burned hand disturbed him.

Late in the afternoon - as he judged the sun's position - he heard the sounds of the others returning. Dawn's light tread was the first up the stairs, followed closely by Willow and Tara. They trooped into the room together, bearing bags and books from the Magic Box that they deposited about the foot of the bed, adding to the clutter.

"How's Buffy?" Dawn asked, taking up a position on the bed next to her sister and curling her feet under her, cat-like. She absently smoothed the comforter where it lay across Buffy's hips.

"No changes," he replied. Turning to address Willow and Tara, he added, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"The supplies for the spell itself were basic enough," Tara said, "since there are no real physical manifestations required, only a mental link. Some incense, candles, oil of protection . . . the usual stuff."

"Ah . . . maybe I'll go and start something for dinner," Willow interrupted. "No - it's okay, really," she added, when Tara would have gone with her. "I can get to work on searching the net for some more information while I cook. You tell Spike about the spell and what else we found."

"I'll be down to help in a bit, then," Tara replied, and Willow waved acknowledgement as she left the room. "The spell is a simple 'net of Thessaly'," she said, turning back to Spike, "It's a linking of your psychic selves, or astral bodies, if you prefer. It will allow us to-" she stopped at Spike's look.

"I'm sure it will turn the trick," he said, "but it's really not my line."

"No, of course not," she murmured, embarrassed.

"What I would really like to know," he continued, "is who or what is doing this to her. Tell me who I should kill to make it stop."

Tara paused, taken somewhat aback by the vehemence in his tone. Even Dawn looked surprised at this bloodthirsty comment, though she had heard enough of his stories to know he meant every word.

"Tell him about the Nightmare Master, Tara," Dawn prompted.

"Well," Tara began, gathering her thoughts again. "We found references in a number of obscure texts on an ethereal demonic figure that feeds on nightmares, variously called _Majinamizi, Alpträumenmeister, Daraa'ona Khwaab_ \- among others. The variety of names indicates it's found in almost every culture in the world, and is blamed for bad dreams and nightmares in general. With the whole world to feed on, most people would never experience more than a few nightmares a year."

"Kids are more susceptible," Dawn added. "I remember when I was little, I used to wake up screaming but I could never explain to my mom what I was so upset about."

Spike blinked thoughtfully, considering the intricacy and power of the monks' spell that had created Dawn, even down to such details. "So, with a whole world to feed on, why Buffy? And why now?" he asked.

"It's possible his presence can be invoked as a curse," Tara explained. "In all the references we managed to find, it's said that the words of the curse themselves have been lost. But if someone managed to rediscover them . . ." she didn't need to elaborate.

"Then he - it - feeds on the nightmare-induced energy of just one person . . . until they die," Spike concluded. "So I have to find it and kill it before it kills Buffy."

"Oh no," Tara countered. "You can't kill it."

"Watch me," he retorted.

"No - I only meant it's actually something necessary. Without the release of negative psychic energy in nightmares, it would build up inside everyone until it couldn't be contained any more-"

"And everyone goes nuts," finished Dawn.

"Bloody marvellous," intoned Spike gravely, leaning back in the chair. "Those are my choices, then? Either Buffy dies or the world goes mad?"

"We think - we hope - that it's possible to sever the link with Buffy, but leave the Nightmare Master unharmed. That's what you'll have to do," Tara said.

"And you can't tell me how, or even what to look for, right?"

"That's what Willow is going to try and find out over the next two days, before you have to go in," she said. "We _will_ find something to help," she assured him again. "It's the waiting that makes this so difficult."

Spike acknowledged the heartfelt sentiment with a weary nod as Tara turned to go.

"I'll be helping Willow with supper if you need me," she said. "Dawn? You coming?"

"I'm going to stay with Buffy for a while," Dawn replied. "Call me when it's ready, please?" Tara smiled and agreed.

As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Dawn leaned forward and asked Spike, "So, what happened to your hand?" At his surprised look, she added, "It was obvious you were trying not to draw attention to it - I do it all the time - now spill!"

" 's nothing, Bit. A little disagreement is all," he disclosed.

"With what? A flamethrower?" Dawn's breath hissed between her teeth as he opened his curled fingers to reveal the blackened and weeping flesh. "Ewww!"

"Cross," he admitted grudgingly, tipping his head to the corner of the room where he had kicked the pieces earlier.

"Who was in here-" Dawn's eyes widened and she breathed, "Xander. _Xander_ did this? No wonder he's not hanging around here any more today. And I used to have such a crush on him, too."

"Let it go, Niblet," Spike said. "It's over now. We settled it."

Dawn's expression was unsatisfied, but she said no more. Instead, she got up off the bed and went back to the bathroom to retrieve the roll of gauze and a tube of antiseptic cream. "I know you said you can't get infected, Spike, but can I at least wrap your hand? It looks like it must really hurt."

"It does that," he agreed, holding out his hand to her ministrations. Dawn spread some of the cream gently on the worst of the burns and then wound the gauze with surprising skill around his wrist, palm and fingers, securing it finally with tiny gold safety pins.

"Hmm. A regular Florence Nightingale. I'll bet you were one of those kids who was always bringing home injured animals and asking your mom if you could keep them," he said when she had finished.

"I was," she confirmed. "I could have filled the house and started my own pet shop. Mom drew the line at snakes and other reptiles, though." She laughed at this happy recollection. "I even thought about becoming a vet for a while."

Spike smiled, glad to have been the source of such an innocent pleasure and distraction. "Tell me more about what it was like for you growing up, Dawn," he encouraged.

She blinked. "You know, I think that may be the first time you've actually called me by my name."

They spent an hour talking about how it felt to be the Slayer's younger sister - and even just to be Buffy's sister before that. Spike himself even unbent enough to share a few details from his own childhood and life before Dru had turned him. Both of them were disappointed when Willow called up for Dawn to come to dinner.

"I'll be back right after. Maybe I'll even bring my homework up and do it here," she said, as she slipped out the door.

Spike only nodded, and returned to his vigil.

Later that night, after dinner, after homework, Spike sat alone again, listening to the nighttime noises of the house. Tara had stayed the night with Willow again at last, and he had listened for no little time to the sounds of their love, feeling very hollow. It seemed a crisis was good for bringing _some_ people together, at least. Dawn was a near silent sleeper, as far as he could hear, except for intermittent mumbled words. When these ceased, he wasn't really surprised to find her standing at Buffy's bedroom door in her pyjamas, clutching a stuffed animal tightly to her chest.

"I couldn't sleep any more," she said. "Do you think it would be okay . . . if I climbed in with Buffy for a while?"

"Might even help her," he replied warmly.

"You don't have to go, or anything," Dawn reassured him. "I only want to stay a while." But within minutes, curled against Buffy under the covers, she was deeply asleep.

The nadir of night found Spike wandering the floor, muttering darkly to himself. "She's the Slayer. It's not like it would hurt her - and it wouldn't be that much." He grimaced, feeling an endless, bottomless desire begin to stir again. "I won't," he challenged himself, "not like that. _Not at all_ ," he corrected emphatically.

"Or Dawn. Wouldn't hurt us but a moment, then so sweet." He suddenly ground his fist into the palm of his wounded left hand, letting the resulting pain drive the hunger from him for another little while.

He took to pacing restlessly, since Dawn's presence was enough to keep Buffy calm. The night seemed to last a hundred years as he wrestled for control, demon and man battling for power in one body. Spike clutched the windowsill and felt his face surge between man and monster, and he groaned. Opening the blinds and the windows, he climbed out onto the roof, hoping the cool night air would chill the raging desire inside. He clutched his knees to his chest and dropped his chin, waiting for day.

Sunrise found him back in his chair, hollow eyed but clear headed again. Daylight beyond the re-closed blinds helped to keep the demon at bay. He wouldn't be worried again until nightfall. He hoped.

"What time is it?" Dawn murmured, stirring at last, and reached out blindly for the clock. When her searching hand encountered her sister's still form, she sat up suddenly. "Wow! I must have been really tired after all," she said to herself. She started suddenly, seeing Spike at the side of the bed. "Forgot you were there," she blushed, drawing the covers back up over herself.

"I'll take that as a complement, I suppose," he replied. "If you want to dash for the door, I promise I'll not look."

"I don't think I can get away with another day of missing school, even if Willow did call it in," Dawn said, swinging her feet over the side of the bed. "And I _so_ don't need to be hauled off by social services, so I better be ready when Xander gets here this time." At the door, she turned and looked back. "You know I'd stay here with you otherwise, right?"

"I know," he agreed.

It wasn't even ten more minutes before Xander was yelling up the stairs for Dawn to hurry up. When she didn't reply, Spike could hear him taking the stairs two at a time, promising to come haul the procrastinating teen off to school bodily, if necessary. The booted feet paused outside Buffy's bedroom.

Xander peered in around the door; uncertain of the reception he'd receive. "How's Buffy doing this morning?" he asked, with cautious politeness. When Spike didn't bother to react to his presence, Xander looked him over carefully. "Man, you look like crap. You should really grab a shower and something to eat," he said thoughtlessly.

Spike raised haunted eyes to him. "You know what I eat," he said dully. "Where exactly do you suggest I get it?"

"Right. Forget I said anything," he said, and disappeared behind the closing door again, calling for Dawn.

The second day passed much the same as the first, though this time he held long imaginary conversations with the plush bear Dawn had left on the bed. He wondered if he might already be feeling the effects of the Nightmare Master's absence.

Spike dozed fitfully through the day, but awoke with a start when he heard Dawn at the bedroom door. At least, he thought it was the sound that had wakened him; until the scent of blood brought him fully alert, and roused the demon within. He heaved himself to his feet and reached the door before she could open it.

"Spike?" she asked, finding the door blocked against her. "I - we - I'm so sorry," she finally managed to stammer. "We never even thought to bring you something to eat until I was talking to Xander on the way to school this morning, and then it was too late to do anything until now."

"Just hand it to me," he said, growling around his fangs. "Don't come in."

"Okay," she said, puzzled, doing as he had asked and passing the warmed mug of blood through the opening. "Are you okay? You sound funny. Can I help-"

"No! I . . . don't want you to see me like this," he admitted, shamed that he'd lost control so easily after everything he'd overcome through the night. "Just go away." Hurt, she did as he requested.

Before she had even gone a few steps, Spike had drained the mug, greedily licking every trace of blood from the rim, then swiping his hand about the inside and sucking the last of it from his fingers. He fell to his knees and doubled over, his chest heaving with dry, wracking sobs. Relief sang through every nerve in his body, but in his mind he knew he'd just failed another test.


	16. The Spell Is Cast

**The Spell is Cast**

Spike spent his second night watching over Buffy alone, though Dawn did bid him a timid goodnight through the door. He supposed he couldn't blame her - he hadn't exactly sounded in a mood to receive visitors when they had spoken earlier.

This time, not suffering from hunger, he was able to maintain control through the night. Instead of his own demon, he wrestled alternately with self-doubt and anger.

 _It would be so easy for me to kill her now. What if one day I just lose it? It's no wonder she's afraid to love me, when I can't even control myself. I have to prove to her that she can trust me somehow._

But then again, why should I? She always knew what I was and she came to me anyway. Why should I be the one grovelling here? People used to be terrified just reading about Dru and me. They would beg for their lives, and we would laugh and paint the town red with their blood- A momentary flare of pain cut this thought short.

I did this - I came back here to this place. This damn town. And why? Dru knew it before I did; that's why she left me. I'm in love with the Slayer. I swear, if she asked me to, I'd lie in the road and let her stomp me into the ground with those ridiculous heels she sometimes sports. She's already done that to my heart, so why not the rest of me as well? What the hell has she done to me that I should care what anyone thinks of me? I never did before.

I used to be proud of being a vampire. I was strong, fast, and dangerous. I did what I wanted and took what I wanted. And then I met her. And everything that I thought was important, every decision I had ever made, ceased to matter. All that did matter was the scent of her hair, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand . . . Could you be any more pathetic, Spike?

I told Angel - we demons, we never change. Looks like the joke's on me, then. How far do I have to go? Turn myself inside out for her - would she even notice? I could be the best thing that's ever happened to her but does she see it?

I don't want to go on if it means being without her.

And so on, and so on, until the first light of day.

Dawn knocked hesitantly on the bedroom door a little after sunrise. "Spike? I brought you some - breakfast, I guess." She paused. "I'll just leave it outside the door, okay?"

Spike opened the door, startling her, and some of the warm blood in the mug she carried slipped over the rim and stained her fingers red. He jerked his attention almost physically from her hands back to her face.

"I'm sorry about yesterday, Niblet," he said. "Hunger can make a bloke a bit tetchy." He took the mug from her hands. "Go wash up, and then come sit with us for a bit, if you've got time." When she had gone, he drained the mug with a few swift gulps, and set it aside.

Dawn stood unmoving in the washroom for several minutes, staring at her stained fingers. _I wonder what it's like, she thought, to need something so much. Does it even taste good, or does he just have to have it anyway?_ She brought her fingers to her lips and tentatively touched one to her tongue.

"Uaagh!" she gagged and spat, quickly rinsing her hands and reaching for the bottle of mouthwash. _That was so disgusting. I'm never going to let anyone turn me - and I swear I'll never complain about Buffy's cooking again._

She made her way back into Buffy's bedroom, hoping that Spike hadn't heard and wouldn't ask what she'd been doing. She found him composed comfortably in the armchair, waiting. But before she could even ask how Buffy was, Xander's voice boomed up from downstairs.

Dawn shrugged regretfully and then, to the great surprise of both of them, darted forward impulsively to kiss Spike's cheek. "Thank you for looking after her, Spike," she said, and then dashed for the door. He sat there, stunned, and brought his hand up to his face.

Tara and Willow returned in the late afternoon bearing supplies for the spell - a surprisingly small number of items, Spike decided, based on what little he knew of magic. Dawn arrived a little after, just as they had finished marking a number of symbols on the floor around the bed.

"Did you hear?" she asked breathlessly as she entered the room. "There was another robbery last night at the museum. The thieves took a couple of Inca enamelled medallions and a ruby necklace. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked.

"The nerds?" Willow enquired, and Dawn nodded.

"You don't suppose they're the ones who cursed Buffy, do you?" Dawn asked. "So that she wouldn't be able to stop them?"

"We have to find them and put an end to this," Willow insisted. "They don't know what they're messing with now. They could unleash something even worse - if that's possible."

"When we get back, I'll hunt them down and kill them myself," Spike interjected. Willow and Dawn shared the same disbelieving look. "Oh, all right," he admitted, "I'll have to hire it done. But if I find they're the ones who are hurting Buffy, they won't be around for too bloody long."

"We're almost ready to start," Tara said, to make them focus again on the predicament at hand. "As soon as the sun sets, we'll begin. Better get something to eat and take any bathroom breaks you need now."

They gathered together again in Buffy's bedroom at dusk. Tara handed Dawn several fat candles. "Set these into the markings on the floor, Dawn," she instructed. "Then bring me those jars and brushes from the dresser." When Dawn had done so, Tara turned to Spike.

"We need to draw a number of symbols on you as well," she said, almost apologetically. "Forehead, throat, chest, hands and feet. They'll help focus the energy of the spell that sends you into Buffy's dream world."

"Right," he said, matter-of-factly. "Where should I be?"

"Umm . . . it would probably be easiest if you lie on the bed next to Buffy," she said.

Spike complied; first sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling off his boots and socks, then reaching up and pulling his tee shirt over his head. He lay back on the bed, resting his hands on his thighs.

Tara handed a jar of pigment and a small brush to Willow, who moved up beside the bed. "You okay with this, Red?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm not activating the spell," she explained. "I just have better handwriting." The amount of laughter this provoked from the four of them was all out of proportion to the humour of her statement, but it helped relieve some of the tension in the room. She proceeded to brush several intricate signs all over Spike's prone form. "I hope you're not ticklish," she murmured.

He was, but there was no way in hell he was going to admit it. _'Former Sunnydale Big Bad Vampire Reduced to Giggles'. I don't bloody think so._ He bit his tongue to maintain his control. Buffy knew, of course - she'd taken advantage of the fact several times. He cut off that thought sharply; it hurt too much.

Willow stepped back and surveyed her handiwork critically. She sat on the edge of the bed again and leaned over to modify some of the markings. When they were corrected to her satisfaction, she looked down at Spike, who was lying back with his eyes closed. As though by instinct, she bent forward and barely grazed his lips with her own. His eyes flew open, and she jumped back, startled.

"For - for luck," she whispered shyly. "Please bring her back safely." Then nothing would do but that Dawn should come around the bed and repeat her action.

Spike looked expectantly across the room at Tara, who only smiled and shook her head. "You're not my type," she murmured.

"What, and spoil my luck?" he asked with a grin, laying his head back on the pillow. "Let's get this show started."

"Right," Tara agreed. "Dawn, light the candles." Tara dragged the armchair to the foot of the bed and held the open spell book in her lap. She paused before beginning the spell that would send Spike into Buffy's nightmares for a last bit of advice. "When you arrive in her dreams, somewhere on yourself you'll find a talisman that represents my link to you. You'll have a second one for Buffy as well. When you find her, get her to put it on. I'll know then that you've found her, and I can bring you both out."

"Talisman, right," he confirmed. "What's it look like?"

Tara only shook her head. "I don't know. Its form will be dictated by the dream world. I only know it will be something you wouldn't normally wear."

"Just my luck it'll be a bloody crucifix," Spike muttered darkly.

Tara unfolded the sheaf of papers where she had made her notes and began to read in an ancient language. The air rang like a bell with her words, and Spike felt a tingling whisper of a breeze caress his skin. He reached for Buffy's still hand with his bandaged one and clasped it tightly.

A kaleidoscope of images swallowed him.

 _Buffy fallen to the floor and wrapped in . . . a shroud? Fire engulfing her room. Dawn struggling as Buffy held one hand over her nose and mouth. His own demon visage, fangs bared. Willow lying on the floor in a lake of blood. Angelus mocking her. Joyce's lifeless body on the couch. A figure whose face was obscured by a dark hood. Staking Dawn as she emerged from a fresh grave. Xander face down in a pool of scummy water. Trapped in a cold, dark space._

The mad whirl of visions threatened to make him physically ill - only he couldn't feel his own body anymore. _She's had three days of this?_ he despaired, and then was suddenly cast headlong onto a dew-drenched lawn.


	17. Triplet

**Triplet**

 **Nightmares Again**

He lay on the cool, wet grass for some time until he was sure there would be no more movement. Getting to his feet slowly, he surveyed his surroundings. It looked as though it could be any one of the many Sunnydale cemeteries, not long after sunset. Except that where the graveyard should have ended and the town begun, there was . . . nothing. A blank wall of what looked like mist surrounded the area on all sides. _Must mean that the nightmare takes place only here, he decided._

An unfamiliar sensation made him look down. Wrapped in intricate coils around the wrist and fingers of his right hand was a rawhide thong threaded with several irregularly shaped stones. A large, flat stone centred on the back of his hand glowed softly with an amber light. A second thong dangled loosely from his wrist, and he wrapped it up securely until he could find Buffy and give it to her. _Not my style, no. But as long as it works . . ._

Movement near an ornate marble crypt caught his attention. A single figure in white emerged from the doorway and walked uncertainly into the graveyard. _Fledgling vampire, Spike thought, still getting used to the new senses - and hungry._ He moved closer, attracted by something he couldn't name.

The young female vampire stumbled and fell to the ground as he approached, and she leaned heavily on a nearby headstone trying to get to her feet again. It wasn't until he had come up nearly beside her that she noticed his presence and turned wary golden eyes to this new threat. Her mouth was liberally streaked with fresh blood.

All the strength left his limbs and he collapsed to his knees beside her. The flesh on his arms pricked sharply as he reached for her. _Ah, love. I'm so sorry - I couldn't get here in time. To become the antithesis of everything you believe in . . ._

Before he could finish this thought, the dim light wavered strangely around him, and Buffy and the cemetery both vanished. The whirlwind returned and swept him away as well.

 **Break of Dawn**

A cemetery again; and a small, lone figure kneeling by a headstone with an air of infinite sorrow. Spike walked slowly forward, assessing this new scenario. "Buffy?" he called softly. She didn't stir, but kept watch over the fresh grave.

He moved up until he stood close behind her. It was only then that he managed to see that the inscription on the headstone read "Dawn Summers - Beloved Daughter and Sister - 1987-2002". _Not my Niblet - please, no!_ he pleaded to any powers that might deign to hear such a creature as himself.

"Buffy, I-" There were absolutely no words he could say that would make any difference, so he only laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Without even turning to acknowledge his presence, she shook his hand away impatiently. Her own hands remained folded in her lap.

He tried again to get her attention, dropping to one knee in front of her and reaching to turn her head towards him. "Love, look at me. This isn't real." Faster than his eye could follow, her arm lashed out and knocked him onto his back on the close-cropped lawn. His attention was suddenly riveted by the stake that appeared in her hand, and he scrabbled backward away from her. So intent was he on avoiding what seemed to be swiftly advancing woody death that at first he didn't see the ground begin to stir behind her.

Buffy spun around at once in response to the noise. One small hand, and then another, appeared above the loose soil. In an appalling caricature of birth, Dawn's dark head pushed free of the grave and she clawed her way free. Her rough face and yellow eyes held no recognition or any sign of human emotion, only a fierce hunger that demanded satisfaction as she advanced on her sister.

Spike watched, frozen in shock, as Buffy seized Dawn by the bodice of her simple dress and plunged the stake mercilessly into her heart. Ashes and dust scattered on a sudden gust of wind. Her face hard and cold, Buffy stood looking down at the disturbed earth. Then, as if the Slayer's strength had suddenly been stripped from her, her expression crumbled into grief and she fell to her knees, clutching desperately at the damp earth and sobbing.

His paralysis broken, Spike tried to move forward to comfort her, but when he reached for her his hands passed through her huddled form. All he felt was a tingle in his fingertips like an electric shock. _Too late, always too late._ The wind licked at her hair and she was gone.

 **Resurrection**

He appeared in a forest glade but it sounded more like a freeway, echoing with the sound of motorcycle engines. The engine noises faded gradually, and he looked around with a sudden anxiety, realizing where he must be. Where he had spent hours every night the last summer, remembering how he had been faster, or stronger, or more clever, and she wasn't really lying cold in the ground below him. As he turned, he saw her simple headstone and stepped forward involuntarily. His boot crushed shards of pottery underfoot and he bent to retrieve pieces of a broken urn. The scent of fresh blood was still sharp in the air.

Only moments after the resurrection spell had been cast, Willow and the others had been driven from Buffy's hidden grave by the marauders. They hadn't returned, thinking that the broken urn meant the spell hadn't been completed. Instead, they had left Buffy . . . Spike dropped to his knees and began frantically tearing at the soil; heedless of the damage he was doing to himself. Below him, through several feet of earth, he could hear the desperate scrabble of her small hands hammering at the lid of her coffin, her panic-stricken gasps as the air began to go stale.

Spike threw earth aside wildly in his need to reach her, to save her. He reached the wood of the coffin just as Buffy's hands broke through. He grabbed the jagged edges of the hole and ripped the wood away, widening the opening enough to haul her through and into his arms.

"I'm here, love," he murmured over and over into her ear. "It's over now. It was only a dream." Everything twisted and spun; she was gone from his arms and he was gone from her world.


	18. Gravitas  Iterum Atque Iterum

**Gravitas - Iterum Atque Iterum**

Spike abruptly found himself standing at the foot of the stairs in Buffy's house. He turned about quickly, but saw no immediate threat. The unrelieved blankness outside the windows led him to conclude that whatever this nightmare was, it took place entirely within the home. There was a sudden thump from the floor above him, as of something - or someone - falling. Spike raced up the stairs.

"Buffy?" he called. "Are you there, love?" He paused at the top of the stairs to listen for a response. He had nearly decided to return to the main level when he heard a muffled groan coming from the bathroom, and he pulled open the door sharply.

The first thing to hit his senses was the smell. A sour stink of illness hung in the air, and he reeled back. But when his attention was caught by the small, still figure on the floor shrouded in the torn shower curtain, he steeled himself and moved quickly into the room, kneeling beside her.

"Buffy?" he repeated, fearing the worst, and was immensely relieved when she stirred and emitted a low moan. "What happened, pet? Who did this to you?" he inquired, as he helped her disentangle herself. Buffy rolled free of the constraining fabric and levered herself stiffly up to a seated position against the tub. She scraped back lank hair from her face with both hands, and looked up at him. The shadows under her eyes were so deep that they looked like bruises. Without warning, one fist lashed out and caught him just above his right ear, sending him sprawling. The look she gave him as he picked himself up was empty and cold, but her voice was hot with rage.

"You did, you bastard," she hissed. "You did this to me." Her words and the anguish in her tone were more painful to him than his throbbing head.

"Slayer," he said, gripping her wrists tightly to prevent her striking at him again. "This isn't real. It's a nightmare."

She laughed hollowly. "So we finally agree on something. My life has been a nightmare ever since I suspected . . ." She looked away.

Spike drew closer. "Suspected what, love?" he asked gently.

"That I was . . . p-pregnant," she blurted, and broke into sudden, shocking tears.

Spike's mouth shaped the word soundlessly. Pregnant? And by him? It simply wasn't possible, and he repeated as much to her.

"See for yourself," she demanded, pointing to the plastic bits scattered across the floor - remnants of a home pregnancy test shattered in anger, he deduced. Spike almost turned to look, so strong was her command, before he realized he was being drawn into her delusion. He moved his grip to her shoulders instead and held her firmly. Tracing back their conversation in his head, he realized where it had taken a wrong turn.

"When I said this was a nightmare, pet, I meant that literally. You are lying in bed at home dreaming it." He looked intently into her eyes, as though to convince her with the power of his will alone. "You're under a magical attack. We were in the cemetery, you and me, having a bit of a set-to, when you just up and collapsed," he explained. "Can you remember anything?"

"Cemetery . . ." she mumbled, confused and brushing away tears. "Can't see you . . . stay away."

He sighed. Trust she'd remember that. "Yes love. We were arguing about that again when you were attacked. You've been three days trapped in nightmares until Red's witchy girlfriend could send me in to find you."

"Tara? Sent you? Why?" Spike wasn't sure this monosyllabic response was actually an improvement on the crying.

"To pull you out. She's anchoring me there so as I can show you the way back. Take this," he said, unwrapping the second amulet from around his wrist and pressing it into her palm. "Put it on and Tara will know I've found you and will bring us back out." When she just looked at it blankly, he helped her twine the cord about her fingers and wrist until it was the twin of his.

She looked up at him, understanding blooming in her expression. "Spike! What the hell am I-" Her nose wrinkled abruptly. "Ugh! That's even worse than the burger smell! And if that's how I smell, how awful must I look?" she asked, bringing her hands up to her face. There wasn't a safe answer to that, so Spike wisely held his tongue.

Buffy looked around the bathroom and down at herself in dismay. "It was all so real. I actually believed . . ."

"We'll be out of here soon enough, now that your amulet is active," Spike said, indicating the soft golden glow of the central stone and just incidentally redirecting the conversation to safer grounds. "I'm just glad I found you - I've been chasing you through a number of unpleasant scenarios now. Tara found that a demon called the Nightmare Master was creating dreams from your memories, but twisting them. When you failed to protect your friends in the nightmares, it was feeding on your pain." It didn't explain this particular nightmare - but he wasn't going to ask.

"I can remember some of them now," she admitted. "I couldn't do anything to help them, and they died. Over and over again. No matter what I did." Her voice was bleak.

"It wasn't real, love. It never was. You've always saved them," he reassured her. Out of the corner of his eye, Spike could see the shimmering that presaged the movement between dreams, and hoped it signalled their retrieval. The prickling began in his skin again, and he seized the last moment to share one more sentiment.

"Buffy, I want you to know . . . if it had been true . . ." he spread one hand gently on her stomach. She tensed slightly, but permitted the intimacy. "If it could be possible that you were going to have a baby, a child of ours," he said, his voice soft and low. "I would have loved it . . . because it would have been a part of you."

The swirling colours stole any reply she might have made.

In Buffy's bedroom, Tara suddenly opened her eyes. She leaned forward in the armchair that she had placed at the end of the bed and sighed, "He found her. Light the incense, Willow," she instructed. Willow moved to comply, directing the aromatic smoke over the two still figures on the bed. "Dawn, get the oil."

"Are they coming back?" Dawn demanded as she fetched the vial. Hours had passed with no visible change, except the candles had burned nearly half away.

"I'm bringing them out now," Tara said. "Anoint their foreheads, throats, hands and feet, Dawn. The oil of protection will help ward away the psychic energy of their nightmares and keep it from rebounding on us." Dawn worked her way around the bed, applying the oil as Tara had directed. As she stroked the last of it onto Spike's forehead, Tara began a low chant in an incomprehensible dialect. For long moments, nothing happened.

Unexpectedly, Spike's eyes snapped open. His body tensed until his back was arched completely off the bed. "Majinamizi!" he shouted, and collapsed again.

"Kyuumu," murmured Buffy softly, as if in agreement, her eyelids fluttering. The six candles surrounding the bed flared into torches of flame, and then went out as though a strong wind had swept through the room, though nothing stirred. Dawn screamed.

Tara rose shakily from her chair, clinging to the arms for support, and Willow was immediately by her side. "What is it Tara? What happened?" she asked.

Tara's expressive eyes filled with tears. "I've lost them. Something pulled them away from me at the last moment. Oh Willow, Dawnie . . . they're gone." And she crumpled to the floor, unconscious.


	19. School Harder Redux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from "School Hard" by David Greenwalt
> 
> Thanks to **buffyworld.com** for their excellent transcripts of episodes, without which this story wouldn't have been possible.

**School Harder Redux**

They found themselves standing together in a deserted, darkened hallway and looked at each other in confusion.

"Are we back?" Buffy asked the question that was foremost in both their minds.

"I don't think so," he replied. "If we were, we should have appeared back in your bedroom."

"We're in my bedroom?" she squeaked, momentarily distracted from her surroundings. "Together?"

"Don't worry, pet," he said, amused. "Willow, Tara and Dawn are there too. I'm on my best behaviour."

"That's not saying much," she countered.

"Big words from someone in a skirt that short," he said, pursing his lips. "You'd tempt a bloody saint, you would."

She looked them over. Spike was wearing essentially the same outfit he always did, but Buffy looked down to see that she was now wearing a wraparound white miniskirt and a clinging green scoop-necked tee shirt. "Better than a shower curtain, I suppose," she said. "I haven't worn this skirt in years, since-" Her face suddenly went pale. "I know where we are."

Spike was instantly all business again. "Where, pet? What's going on?"

"It's parent-teacher night at the high school," she said. "You decided to come after me before-"

"Before the feast of St. Vigeous. I remember," he said.

"And you - Spike-" she looked up at him, confused about how to distinguish between now and then, reality and fantasy. "My mom's going to die!" she cried.

He gripped her resolutely by the shoulders. "It isn't real, it didn't happen that way, and we're not going to _let_ it happen that way this time. This may be your nightmare, but now that you're aware, you can control it," he said firmly. "I know Tara is working on pulling us out; we just have to be patient," he added. "As long as your amulet is active, we're in control here."

"Right," she said, resolve steadying her voice. "We need to find out exactly when and where we are, and come up with a plan to stop Spike - I mean-" she stopped abruptly. "This is going to be very confusing," she sighed, and looked up at him speculatively. "Would you mind if I called you-"

"I suppose you could always call me-" he said simultaneously.

"William," Buffy finished for them both. "Just while we're here?"

He smiled. "At least it sounds better here than the last time I heard it from you," he said, recalling how empty he had felt when she had told him there could be nothing more between them. His face fell and he cursed himself soundlessly when she turned away.

"We should split up and try to find . . . Spike," she said. "Stop him before he kills my mom. I don't know how much of this nightmare there is left to go, so the sooner we start, the better. I'll check the library and the science room where she and Snyder and the others were hiding. You try to get some of his minions out of the way," she directed.

"Right," he said, not trusting himself to say any more.

"Oh, and don't forget," she said, turning back to him and circling one finger in front of her face. "Game face on." He nodded, and the demon from her nightmare stood in front of her again. She had to struggle to stay focussed and remember that _this_ vampire was here to help. They split up and headed down the hallway in opposite directions.

Buffy arrived at the science lab just in time to stake a vampire who was attacking the door with an axe. Her mother's worried face peered out through the opening the axe had made in the door. "Buffy! Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, mom," she replied, succumbing to the strangest sense of déjà vu as she slipped back into the flow of the nightmare.

Her mother pleaded with her through the hole. "Buffy, look, uh, get out of here, okay? We'll be all right!"

Buffy shook her head. "Look, just hang on for one more minute until I tell you to open the door." She made her way quietly back through the hall, knowing that soon she'd see Sheila, who would try to attack her from behind with an axe. It seemed as though the fire axe was everyone's weapon of choice tonight. When Sheila came around the corner at last, Buffy didn't even let her get in a word before she staked her. No reason she had to let the dream take over completely, she thought, dusting off her hands. So she would have been caught completely off guard when another vampire rushed down the hallway, if it hadn't been for Giles yelling a warning from the blockaded library doors.

After she successfully dealt with that vampire, Buffy herded her mom and the others to Giles, who promised to see them to safety. "Mom," she said, before they left, "Whatever you do, don't come back after me, okay? I'll be all right." Ignoring her mom's pleas, Buffy headed back into the fray, hoping that she'd managed to change the outcome of this nightmare.

Spike had managed to divert about half a dozen of his former minions to elsewhere in the school, simply by telling them to go and check various rooms. He might have had idiots working for him back then, he reflected, but at least they took orders without asking questions. He now found himself watching gleefully as his dream self confronted Angel and a captive Xander. Having had no use for mirrors for over a hundred years, he was just appreciating learning how he looked these days. It didn't bother him to see Harris squirm; he knew the boy would make it out unharmed, and he was thoroughly enjoying watching the poof try to fool him with that pathetic act. _We'll just see who's got the biggest wrinklies round here_ , he thought, stifling laughter.

Soon enough, dream-Spike called for his minions to attack, and Angel and Xander made a break for the door. Buffy came around the corner in the hallway behind him, and dream-Spike turned to challenge her. Spike ran down the hall and tackled his doppelganger from behind, bearing him down to the floor with the force of his attack. The two of them struggled for domination, but were evenly matched and could only trade blows back and forth.

Buffy moved forward hesitantly. Spike and . . . William . . . were so entangled in their fight that she found herself having difficulty telling them apart. It was impossible to see which double was wearing the amulet on his hand, and she didn't want to attack the wrong one. It wasn't until William managed to throw Spike away from him and into the wall that she could make a move. Snatching up the pole from where she had dropped it earlier, she swung it at Spike's head. It connected solidly, and he stumbled to one side, dazed. William came up beside her with the axe his double had dropped, but the threat was enough. Spike broke and ran for the doors.

"You okay?" he asked, taking her by one shoulder. "And your mum?"

Buffy nodded. "Giles got them out. Everyone's okay." He - _I guess I can call him Spike again_ \- seemed to be in one piece as well. She found it hard to connect the man in front of her with the vampire of only a few years ago. "What now?"

"Now we wait," Spike said. "When the dreams are over, there's this kind of shimmering effect that you'll see around you. That, and a feeling like ants running up and down your body. That's how I've always known we're shifting between dreams," he explained.

"Lovely," she said with a wry grin. "But I can deal with it, if it gets us out of here."

They relaxed, and waited for the signs of change. So he found himself completely shocked, then, when Joyce came at him from behind.

"You get the hell away from my daughter," Joyce cried, swinging the flat of an axe into his head, and sending him to the floor.

"Mom, no!" Buffy shouted, grabbing her mother's arms to keep her from swinging again. "He's on our side. Spike!" she yelled aside to the vampire, "your face!"

It was no wonder that Joyce had attacked him; he had completely forgotten that he still wore his demon face. Holding his head from the pain, he let his features return to their human form, and then struggled to his feet.

"Oh my god," Joyce exclaimed, "I'm so sorry. I thought-"

They never learned what she thought, as she suddenly became no more substantial than jellied smoke, then vanished.

"Hell of a woman, your mum," Spike said. "Nearly did me in, there."

Overwhelmed with relief that the dream hadn't turned out as she had remembered, Buffy let slip a chuckle. "Your head's harder than that," she teased.

"Gave me a nasty turn, watching you take the pipe to my other self there," he said. "What is it with you Summers women and head shots, anyway? It's always that or my nose. I'm beginning to think you've got issues with my looks."

Buffy laughed openly this time. "How does a man who can't see himself in a mirror become so vain?" she asked.

The hallways around them shivered like an image in a broken mirror and they were gone before he had fully grasped that she had called him a man.


	20. Innocence Regained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from "Innocence" by Joss Whedon
> 
> Thanks to **buffyworld.com** for their excellent transcripts of episodes, without which this story wouldn't have been possible.

**Innocence Regained**

They appeared together again on the wide expanse of lawn in front of an intact Sunnydale High School. Spike looked around and shook his head. "You really didn't enjoy school, did you?" he asked. "Most of your nightmares seem to end up here."

"It could have something to do with there being a Hellmouth in the library," Buffy replied acerbically. "Why didn't we go back this time?"

"I'm not the one in charge of planning this trip, pet," Spike said. "It's your head we're in. Can't you figure a way out? Though 'in you' isn't a place I would normally leave willingly," he leered cheerfully.

Buffy rolled her eyes at this and turned away, hugging herself as she looked around. "It feels so . . . sad here," she whispered. "Like my heart should be breaking. If I didn't know this was only a nightmare, I'd be crying already." She looked back at Spike, who was wearing a puzzled frown. "Can't you feel it?"

He shook his head. " 's not my nightmare, love. Can you tell where we are and what we should be doing?"

"I know I've had this nightmare before. I just can't remember it right now." She took a few deep breaths to steady herself against the pervasive sorrow and tried to focus on the two of them and their surroundings. Spike looked the same as always, but she had exchanged the white skirt for black pants and a thigh length dark jacket. "It's not like I can tell what day it is by what I'm wearing," she complained. "Though if I were wandering around Sunnydale in the evening feeling sad . . ." Her face drained of colour. "It's the day after Angel and I - the day after Angel lost his soul," she amended quickly.

Spike chose to refrain from commenting on that touchy subject and offered additional information instead. "He came to see us - me and Dru - late the previous night. We thought at first it was some new plot, until the Judge said there was no humanity left in him. The damn creature didn't like us nearly as well, as I recall," he said. "Something about reeking of love and loyalty." He looked at her speculatively, and then continued. "Angelus had this grand plan to drive you mad like he'd done with Dru, by going after all your friends."

"Oh god," Buffy exclaimed. "It's Willow. In this nightmare he kills Willow. We have to get into the school and stop him."

Spike took her hands. "We can do that. Tell me what you want me to do," he asked.

Buffy thought furiously. "Go in through the front of the school and stop Willow and Xander before they run into him," she instructed. "I'll take care of Angel. He should be coming in the side door near the lounge.

"Right," he replied shortly. They split up and headed into the school.

Spike decided to head up to the second floor so as not to run into Giles or the Calendar woman - they'd never believe his story in any case. As he approached the stairs back to the main floor near the student lounge, he could hear Willow and Xander long before he saw them. They were talking about how to deal with the Judge. He reflected on bygone days somewhat wistfully. Back when he'd been so in love with Dru and it had seemed like a good idea to kill the Slayer, the Judge had been the most marvellous of presents. Buffy really had spoiled everything, first by dropping that damn organ on him, then making it possible for Angelus to turn up again and start acting like his old, annoying self - starting with stealing Dru away from him. Everything had gone to hell after that.

Still, he reminded himself, now he got to have the Slayer - sort of - and it would surely be an unholy joy to turn the tables on the grand poof, when Angelus was thinking of him as only Dru's injured lapdog. His face split in a wide grin. Just then, the lights went out, and he made his way quickly down the stairs, keeping out of sight.

"Now I'm having a wiggins," came Xander's voice from below.

"What's going on?" Willow asked.

"Let's get to the library," Xander advised, when Angelus' voice came from the far end of the hallway.

"Willow. Xander," he said. Spike wondered how they ever could have been taken in. How could they not hear the changes in him? His own nerves trilled at the thought of facing off against his vampiric forebear. _Good thing I always had this little problem with authority figures_ , he thought.

"Angel," Xander acknowledged flatly. _No love lost there_ , thought Spike. _Not for any of us who'd take Buffy away from you, right?_

"Thank god you're okay," said Willow, relieved. Then she asked, "Did you see Buffy?"

"Yeah," he replied. "What's up with the lights?" _That's right, play the innocent._ Spike's mind continued to supply commentary on the action.

"I don't know," Xander said. "Listen, I think I have an idea."

Angelus dismissed him out of hand. "Forget about that now," he said. "I . . . I've got something to show you." _Mmm-hmm, they're about this big, and they're sharp and pointy. All the better to eat you with, my dear._ Spike found his own bloodlust rising, and he had to struggle sharply to regain control.

"Show us?" Willow asked, confused.

"Yeah. Xander," Angelus commanded, "go and get the others."

"Okay," said Xander, and headed off at a run through the doors and towards the library.

"And Willow," Angelus added. "Come here."

Engrossed in fighting his own demon, Spike nearly missed his chance. He rushed down the stairs. "Don't do it, Red," he advised. "He's not what you think."

"S-Spike?" she stammered, whirling around to where he stood in the stairwell. "What-"

"Spike?" roared Angelus wrathfully. "What the hell is going on?"

"You wouldn't believe the half of it, mate," Spike said in challenge as he rounded the turn at the bottom of the stairs to face his grandsire. He saw Buffy coming through the doors at the end of the hall and charging towards them. "And speaking of my better half-" He had to duck a sudden, enraged swing.

"How the hell did you get out of that chair?" Angelus demanded as he advanced again.

"Always was a quick healer," he replied disdainfully. "Which is more we'll be able say for you," he added thoughtfully, as Buffy hurtled into Angelus from behind, raining down furious blows that brought him to his knees. Spike got in a few of his own for good measure. Nothing improved his temper like a little mayhem.

Just then, Ms. Calendar came through the doors, bearing a cross. "Willow, get back," she said. "That's not Angel any more."

Xander came pelting down the hallway behind them, and skidded to a stop. "What the hell?" he exclaimed, on seeing the tumult in the hall.

"Ms. Calendar - Jenny - get them out of here!" Buffy shouted, and her friends took off in the other direction. Angelus was fighting back like a cornered animal, and even at two against one, they were hard pressed to contain him. At one point, he knocked Buffy back against the wall so hard that she slid down it, momentarily dazed. At this, Spike charged forward and drove both his fists deep into Angelus' belly, doubling him over. He followed up with a two-handed blow to the back of his head that brought him to his knees. By then, Buffy had recovered enough to add a kick that sent him sprawling. He scuttled for the door and escape, and Buffy turned to follow him, but Spike held her back.

"We've accomplished what we came for, love," he said. "Besides, it would hurt him more to get away, knowing that you'd beaten him - and that I'd turned on him. Serves him right anyway, for stealing Dru away from me.

"He came back that night," he added. "All full of himself. Going on about how he was going to hurt you, telling me I was a wreck in that wheelchair and flirting with Dru. Sodding poof. Wouldn't even try to kill you without some big production . . ." His voice trailed away as he tardily remembered it was the object of his former plans to whom he was speaking.

"You're not picking any of those feelings up from being in this nightmare, are you?" Buffy asked, concerned.

"No," he replied immediately. "I know why I'm here. I came in to help you - though I don't seem to be doing anything towards getting us out of here." He looked deep into her eyes, desperate to convince her of his sincerity. "I'm doing it because I'm in love with you, and because I want you to - and I know you don't want to hear any of this," he said quickly before she could protest, "so I'll just hope that you'll believe for now I'm your friend."

Buffy was silent for some time. The two of them made themselves relatively comfortable on the stairs as they waited for the dream to end. "But about what you said in the hallway?" she ventured, out of the blue.

"What I - when?" he asked, puzzled.

"Better half?" she enquired, raising one brow.

"Ah. Man can dream, can't he?" he replied with a smile, which suddenly became quite foolish as she leaned towards him to kiss his cheek.

"Thank you William," she said simply. "For helping to keep this dream from going wrong again."

And for the first time in his unlife, Spike found himself without a witty comeback.


	21. Sacrifices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from "What's My Line, part 2" by Marti Noxon
> 
> Thanks to **buffyworld.com** for their excellent transcripts of episodes, without which this story wouldn't have been possible.

**Sacrifices**

"Bloody hell!" Spike shouted, as his skin began to smoke in the strong daylight. He dove for the nearest deep shadows against a wall. Looking out from their safety, he swore again, feelingly. "Not the damn school again! What is it with you?"

Buffy joined him in the shade. "Hey, this place was a huge part of my life for three years. It's no wonder we end up here."

"How can you have nightmares about broad daylight? That sounds like it should be _my_ nightmare - look at it, it's bloody dangerous."

In spite of what dangers might loom ahead of them, Buffy laughed. "Let's see if we can get you to the nearest sewer, then," she said. "I'll go find out what's happening, and I'll meet you . . ."

"My crypt," he decided. "Or where it will be, since it isn't mine yet if the school's still standing. Soonest you can get there, pet. I'll let you know if any interesting information turns up on the way."

She nodded, and moved to the street to lift the nearest manhole cover that accessed Sunnydale's extensive sewer system. Covering himself as best he could with his duster, Spike dashed for the street through the murderous sunlight, and dropped through the opening, only slightly scorched.

Replacing the cover, Buffy headed for the school doors for what she hoped would finally be the last time. It seemed in all respects to be a regular school day, so she moved purposefully towards the library as though an urgent research project awaited her. _Not all that far from the truth_ , she thought.

Sure enough, when she reached the library she found Giles, Willow, Xander and Cordelia clustered around the table, which was littered with dozens of open volumes. Giles had just placed one in front of Xander. "Well, you should have better luck with this one. There's a whole section devoted to the Order of Taraka."

Buffy froze in place. A cascade of images threatened to overwhelm her: being attacked at the ice rink; the 'policewoman' using her for target practice; the bug man; Spike in the abandoned church where he would perform the ritual to heal Druscilla at the cost of Angel's life. She knew that in reality, Spike had been defeated and so badly injured that he'd been essentially harmless for months while it was Angel and Druscilla who terrorized everyone she loved. But all she could remember from the uncounted times she'd experienced this nightmare was seeing the lifeless bodies of her friends and her first love scattered about her while Spike and a restored Dru had gloated in their triumph. Buffy tried to narrow the focus of her thoughts to the truth of William - the man he had become - waiting to help her yet again.

It shook her to see Kendra, alive again in this dream, calmly sharpening a knife in Giles' office. She waved absentminded greeting to the others as she passed, and went to speak with the other Slayer, slipping easily into the flow of the dream for a while until she could find a way to communicate what she had learned to William.

"Your life is very different dan mine," Kendra said, seeing Buffy walk in.

"You mean the part where I occasionally have one?" she asked. "Yeah, I guess it is."

"De tings you do and have, I was taught, distract from my calling. Friends, school . . . even family," Kendra explained. "My parents, dey sent me to my Watcher when I was very young."

"I guess it just sounds very lonely," Buffy replied.

"Emotions are weakness, Buffy." Kendra said with a superior tone. "You shouldn't entertain dem."

Buffy could only think of the friendship and love she'd known - _though sometimes from the most extraordinary people_ , she thought with a secret smile - and how much she would be reduced without them. "Kendra, my emotions give me power. They're total assets!" she insisted. Kendra wiped her sharpened blade free of metal fragments carefully. "Maybe for you," she said. "But I prefer to keep an even mind."

"Mmm. I guess that explains it."

"Explains what?" asked Kendra, suddenly curious.

Buffy answered playfully. "Oh, well, when we were fighting, uh, you're amazing! Your technique, it's flawless, it's, hmm, better than mine."

"I know," the other girl replied smugly.

 _Well, you have ego, at least_. "Still, I would have kicked your butt in the end. And you know why? No imagination."

"Really? Ya tink so?" Kendra put down the rag she had been using on her knife and looked at Buffy intently.

"Oh, I know so. You're good, but power alone isn't enough. A good fighter needs to know how to improvise, to go with the flow. Uh-uh, seriously, don't get me wrong - you really do have potential."

"Potential? I could wipe de floor wit you right now!" she replied hotly.

Buffy looked her directly in the eye. "That would be anger you're feeling."

"What?" she asked, confused.

"You feel it, right? How the anger gives you fire? A Slayer needs that." _You especially will need that if we're all going to survive the next few hours._

Xander interrupted her pep talk as he came into the office to retrieve a book. "Excuse me, ladies," he said. Kendra looked uncomfortably down at the floor, and Buffy remembered being told how little the other Slayer had been permitted to interact with others, particularly boys. "Nice knife," Xander added, and then left again.

"I'm not permitted to speak with boys," Kendra offered by way of explanation, not even needing to be asked.

"Unless you're pummelling them," Buffy replied. She suddenly realized how she could turn this sequence to her advantage and get away on her own. "Wait a minute."

"What?"

"That guy!" she said. "The sleazoid you nearly decked in the bar."

"You tink he might help us?"

"I tink we might make him!" Buffy said, cheerily mimicking the other girl's accent for a moment.

"Giles," Buffy leaned through the door to address the others. "I think I know where we can get some information about what Spike's planning and where he is right now."

"Take Kendra with you then," he said, "for safety's sake."

"I think Kendra should stay here, since she knows so much about the Order of Taraka," Buffy said, playing shamelessly on the other Slayer's sense of duty. "I can handle this bit of grunt work." _Since I already know what's going to happen and am not going anywhere near Willy_. Without giving anyone time to argue, she was quickly out the door and on her way to rendezvous with William to try and derail this nightmare before it went any further.

Buffy found him investigating the crypt that he had made his home - would make his home in the future history of this memory? This dream syntax was impossible, she decided. At this point it was only bare stone, lacking all the comfortable touches he had added.

"You know," he said, sensing her entrance but not turning around, "I think I'll be glad to have the chance to redecorate when we get back. I was getting bored with the old look anyway."

When she didn't reply, he raised his eyes and took in her worried expression. "What is it this time, love?" he asked.

"It's you again," she said shortly. "Or rather, it's Spike," she amended, falling back into the nomenclature they'd worked out when faced with his dream double before. "Angel's been captured-"

"For the ritual of Du Lac," he completed for her. "So I could heal Dru." His face lost all expression and he leaned back against one of the frosted windows, hands clutching the stone sill by his sides. "I seem to have made quite the impression on you, to be featured in so many of your nightmares."

Buffy wasn't sure if he was regretful or bragging. "I told the others I was off to beat some information on your whereabouts out of Willy, but I have to get back quickly. You have to stop Spike from completing the ritual and killing Angel, and Kendra and I have to protect everyone from the Order of Taraka, or this time they all die."

Spike didn't move. "You're aware in this dream," he said slowly. "You know that it's not real. Why not just wait here until it's over?"

"It's real to me!" Buffy insisted. "I can't let it happen again."

"So what you're asking," he said, "is that I go attack myself, deceive and probably kill the woman I loved for a century - who made me everything I am - all to save the bastard who would try to steal her away from me in a few weeks. Who, incidentally, is nothing but a figment of your imagination and will vanish like the morning dew in only a few hours."

Put that way, Buffy found it difficult to argue. "It's Druscilla, isn't it?" she asked, thinking she understood. "You don't want to have to see her again."

"I didn't say I wouldn't," he replied, ignoring her question. "I know that letting the nightmare run unchanged will only make you weaker and it will be harder to get us out of here. I only want you to realize what you're asking me to do. For you.

"You know I'd kill for you. I'd die for you. But I'm damned if I know what it will take to get you to feel anything for me. Oh wait, that's right. I'm already damned," he said sarcastically.

She moved closer to him, bringing one hand hesitantly up to his cheek, while the other spread warmly on his chest. "William, please," she said, "I need your help. I know what I'm asking."

He pulled her hand back from his face and turned his head to the side. "You don't have to bribe me," he said harshly, "I'd have done it for you anyway." Spike let his gaze wander shamelessly over her. "But then, I'm not your precious Angel, either, all noble and self-sacrificing. If you're offering . . ." his voice trailed away as he pulled her fractionally closer.

"I didn't mean . . . it wasn't a bribe," she insisted. "I really don't know if we can change this nightmare; there are so many people in danger and so many ways it can still go wrong. I know that if I were on my own in this dream, unaware, I'd be terrified. I want to be with you," she said resolutely. "Now. Here. I do understand what I'm asking, and what I'm offering," she repeated. Part of her - a part that was getting smaller by the moment - cried out that giving herself to a demon was utterly wrong. But a much larger part now allowed the possibility of joy with this man who knew her so intimately in so many ways, all her hopes and fears. No one else had ever so easily slipped through her defences to find the person behind the myth of the Slayer.

"If you love me, William," she said softly, pressing into his embrace and pulling his arms around her. "Then love me." Her greedy mouth captured his, biting at his full lower lip.

He pulled back for a moment to look into her eyes, seeking confirmation of his hopes. "When we get back," he said. "We do this properly; with candles and wine and music and all. But for right here, right now . . . turn around," he whispered roughly in her ear.

She obeyed, and he turned both of them to face the window. His left hand deftly opened her pants and slipped under the taut elastic of her panties. His fingers plunged into her deeply, once, twice - burning with need at finding her already wet for him. Buffy moaned and pressed her hips back into his growing hardness.

Spike withdrew his fingers, tugged her pants down over her hips to her thighs and then reached back for his own zipper. One hand in the middle of her back pushed her to lean forward until her hands splayed against the translucent windowpanes. He nudged her legs further apart with one foot. Bringing his other arm around her waist, he thrust into her suddenly and powerfully. Their heated cries echoed together from the cold stone walls. For a while at least, their thoughts turned only about each other.

He moved slowly at first, but as his control frayed, he began to shudder and gasp for the breath he didn't need. Her hands streaked the glass as her body began to tremble with her impending climax. Approaching his own, he tightened his arms and drew her back against him, whispering hotly in her ear words meant for her alone - no other woman had wrung such admissions from him before. There was nothing of tenderness in what brought them together; it only served to satisfy a wild, driving need they both shared. But when her pounding heart and ragged breathing began to slow again, he drew her hair back from her temple and kissed her gently there.

Not a word passed between them as they drew their clothing back into order. Everything that needed to be said their faces and bodies spoke for them as they clung together, desperate for small solace in this nightmare, until they could no longer put off the inevitable. "Be careful," Buffy whispered, before kissing him goodbye.

"Where were you with that advice _before_ I fell in love with the Slayer?" he asked wryly, and slipped out the door into the relative safety of twilight before she could reply.

Buffy made her way quickly back to the school, to lead the others to the abandoned church, but this time, she hoped, not to their deaths.

Spike approached the factory warily, careful to keep from being seen by any of his minions on patrol. It was less difficult than he expected, and he sighed inwardly at the low quality of their service before slipping quietly inside.

He could hear Dru's mesmerizing tones and Angel's screams as she tortured him with holy water by their bed. Retrieving some handcuffs and other restraints, he lay in wait for his dream self to return. He didn't have to wait for long. Striking from behind, and with exact knowledge of his opponent's weaknesses, he overpowered his doppelganger and left him securely bound and hidden in such a way that he would neither escape nor be found for several hours at least. _I hope I'm not being stupid by not killing him, but that's just a little too much like suicide_. He took a deep, unnecessary, but steadying breath and entered the bedroom.

"That's it, then," he said, drawing Druscilla's attention away from the captive Angel tied at the foot of their bed. "Off to church." Even though this wasn't his nightmare, the words seemed to burn brightly in his memory, pulling him back into the past.

Druscilla stood as he entered. "It makes pretty colours," she said, indicating the livid burns on Angel's chest.

He replied with an annoyed puff of air. "I'll see him die soon enough. I've never been much for the pre-show," he said, reaching up to untie one of Angel's wrists. Druscilla put away the pitcher of holy water and retrieved Miss Edith from where she had been placed to watch the bloody show.

"Too bad," said Angel mockingly. "That's what Druscilla likes best, as I recall."

Spike could remember just how easily Angel had gotten under his skin by taunting him with his own former relationship with Dru. This time, however, he only played along, waiting. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked as he remembered asking before, moving to untie Angel's other wrist.

"Ask her. She knows what I mean," he replied.

Druscilla came up to stand behind him, and he turned his head to see her more clearly. He could still feel the lure that his dark goddess held for him, and struggled to remember the treachery and the betrayals that had torn them apart. "Well?" he asked, more harshly than he had intended.

Druscilla spoke to Angel from over his shoulder. "Shhh! Grrrruff! Bad dog," she teased.

Still looking to make him lose control, Angel answered her. "You should have let me talk to him, Dru. Sounds like your boy could use some pointers." He directed his next words back to Spike. "She likes to be teased."

Spike finished untying the other rope and threw it to the floor. _Any moment now_ , he thought. _I'll show you what I know about teasing_. "Keep your hole shut!" he shouted, standing over his intended victim. Angel's superior attitude vanished suddenly. Spike could see in his face the exact moment that he detected Buffy's scent on his captor, and looked up in fear.

"What have you done with Buffy?" Angel cried, agony wringing out his words.

"You should really ask what _haven't_ we done," Spike replied smugly, knowing that it wasn't the scent of Buffy's fear that Angel was detecting on him, but rather that of her desire - which would torment him even more. "There are such depths of dark need in her that you'd never have been able to satisfy her for long."

He grabbed Angel by the throat, lifted him to his feet and held him against the bedpost. "You two would never have had the fire we have," he said, delighted to be turning his memories of Angel's words against him. He would have continued his taunting, but Druscilla interrupted him.

"Spike, the moon is rising," she said. "It's time - unasareru." Her eyes darkened and her voice became low and rough. "Come walk with me in álmok világa."

Spike turned to her, puzzled. Her dark eyes were dizzying him with the intensity of her stare. Something - there was something he was supposed to be doing . . . _We have to get to the church before the moon rises - for the ritual, of course. Beloved, you'll soon be strong again._

He could hardly contain his glee at finally having his enemy and rival at his mercy. "Too bad, Angelus. Looks like you go the hard way - along with the rest of this miserable town." He kept Angel held firmly against the bedpost as he and Druscilla engaged in a passionate kiss.

Spike walked the main aisle of the church, swinging a burning incense censer. "Eligor. I name thee. Bringer of war, poisoners, pariahs, grand obscenity." He turned back to the altar, where he had strapped Angel and Druscilla together to a chain hanging from the ceiling. Angel's right hand had been tied to the chain above his head. He continued the chant.

"Eligor, wretched master of decay, bring your black medicine."

"Black medicine," Druscilla echoed from where she hung.

He set the censer down on the altar and picked up the Du Lac Cross with his gloved hand, holding it upside down. "Come. Restore your most impious, murderous child."

"Murderous child," Dru murmured.

He grasped the downward-pointing tip of the cross with his other hand and yanked down, pulling out a dagger. Spike then laid the rest of the cross back on the altar. "From the blood of the sire she is risen."

He raised Druscilla's left hand to Angel's and she clasped it tightly. "From the blood of the sire, she shall rise again," he intoned, and drew back his arm to strike.

"No!" Buffy screamed from the door of the church. Kendra took more direct action, firing a crossbow bolt that pierced his wrist, making him drop the cross and clutch his arm in agony. The rest of the Scooby gang spilled into the church behind them, spreading out to take on their foes.

"Patrice!" Spike yelled, calling for one of the Taraka assassins. She emerged from the shadows at the side of the church, drawing her gun. Kendra suddenly went into a series of flips ending in a kick that knocked Patrice down and sent the gun flying from her hands. She then ran immediately over to challenge Spike, who had just pulled the crossbow bolt through his wrist. Buffy met her there. "Who the hell is this?" Spike cried.

Kendra grabbed him by the shirt.

"It's your lucky day, Spike," Buffy said, but her voice seemed strangely choked with emotion.

"Two Slayers!" Kendra shouted, as her fist connected hard with his jaw.

"No waiting!" Buffy added, jabbing even harder to his stomach. He collapsed at her feet.

Buffy angrily brushed the tears from her eyes. _Mourn for William later_ , she told herself sternly. _First kill the bastards who killed him_. Sudden movement caught her attention, and she whirled to face Patrice, who had armed herself again with blades from her wrist sheaths. She clutched at the assassin's arms and brought one knee up sharply into her stomach, then followed with a kick to the face that sent her stumbling back into the wall.

The various battles deteriorated into general chaos all around them, with her friends bravely challenging assassins and vampires at the risk of their lives. Behind Buffy, Spike got to his feet again to face Kendra's assault. He managed to duck her roundhouse kick, and punched her hard, knocking her down. Kendra scrambled to recover and defend herself, but Spike suddenly fell to his knees, clutching at his head and screaming in agony.

"Kendra! Switch!" Buffy called, moving swiftly to exchange places with the other Slayer.

She bent over and Kendra rolled over her back to face Patrice, immediately landing a punch and knocking her into the wall again. Buffy knelt in front of Spike. _Spike wouldn't have the chip yet, so this has to be_ \- "William," she breathed, nearly melting with relief that he hadn't been killed after all. Sure enough, there was the dream travel amulet on his hand, now pulsing raggedly with feeble light beneath a slick coating of blood from his wound. _What happened here?_

"Questions later," she muttered to herself, on seeing that he would recover. "First put an end to this." Buffy rolled across the floor in front of the altar and seized the dagger of the Du Lac Cross from where it had been dropped. Trapping the blade under one foot, she pulled up sharply on the hilt, snapping it in two. It flared with a sudden purple light, and then vanished from her hands. Around her everything became still. One by one both friend and foe vanished from the church, shimmering into indistinct blurs, all except for the bound pair at the altar.

Spike staggered up behind her, still holding one hand to his head. He reached for the chain where it was anchored, and let Angel and Druscilla down carefully to the floor. Unbinding them, he sat and drew Druscilla gently into his lap. "That was so very exciting," she whispered faintly. "Will I be better soon?" Her body suddenly shivered into dust in his arms, and he bent over with a low moan of pain. Angel vanished in the same instant, before Buffy could even get near him.

Buffy swallowed her own sorrow and came up behind him, laying a hand on one shoulder. "William," she said softly, "I know what you're feeling, but it's only a dream. She's not really dead."

He shook her hand from his shoulder angrily. "Leave off, Slayer," he said harshly, tears squeezing from behind his closed lids. "I've already turned my back on everything I am, for you. Dru . . . was the centre of my world for more than a hundred years. Dream or not, I'll always know I killed her." He rocked despondently over his empty hands. But he finally got back to his feet, brushing the dust of his past away.

"I only looked at her," he said, "and I was swallowed up in the dream. The Nightmare Master reached me through her, and I almost killed you. Some rescuer I turned out to be," he said cynically.

"I wouldn't have made it this far without your help," she insisted. "When you found me I was ready to die - I would have killed myself in one of my dreams if it had gone on much longer." She moved close to him and slipped one arm around his waist. He accepted her comfort this time, bringing his own arm around her and resting his cheek against her hair.

A hot gust of air suddenly swept through the church, stirring the debris into frenzied little dust devils. They both stared as one twisted column of dust grew thicker and darker in front of them, spinning into a vaguely man-like form with dark fires where the eyes should be. "König des Terrors," it said in a sibilant whisper, and "Seigneur des Rêves. Fear me."

Spike released Buffy and stepped forward with clenched fists. "I've had enough of you jerking my chain," he roared.

"Spike, no!" Buffy cautioned, her instincts telling her that this was exactly the wrong thing to do. But she was too late. Spike waded into the maelstrom of dust and was immediately seized and flung across the church, striking the wall hard and sliding down it to lie limply on the floor.

The room hazed as though seen through heat waves above a desert highway and everything faded to black.


	22. Praha

**Praha**

Buffy found herself standing alone on a dark street corner in a city she didn't recognize. She ducked quickly into the shadow of the nearest building to give herself time to assess the situation. She knew something had gone wrong - even more wrong, if wrongness could be so graduated - this had to still be a nightmare, but she knew both that and exactly who she was. So what was going on?

Buffy took a few moments to examine her surroundings more closely. With the exception of an ornate church spire she could see in the distance, none of the buildings were over three stories tall, and all of them seemed uniformly old and foreign in architecture. Even the streetlights were subtly different than what she was used to, and shone their light on what she decided must be a cobblestone pavement, wet with recent rain. Buffy began to fear that she had been cast adrift in some stranger's dreams and would never find her way out. This was nothing she had ever even imagined before.

Her attention was suddenly drawn by a commotion at the end of the street, and she realized that the previous stillness had been quite unnatural. The tumult grew in volume and Buffy drew back further into the concealing shadows of the nearest alley. Some way down the street, a man and a woman staggered around a corner. The woman struggled with her long skirts and was half dragged, half carried by her companion. He himself seemed to be having some difficulty walking, but never stopped supporting her. They stumbled from wall to curb to lamppost and on with an air of desperation, as if in flight from some deadly pursuit.

Beyond them an angry crowd spilled into the street. The people bore an assortment of weapons, ranging from kitchen knives to rifles, with every imaginable possibility in between. They roared with one voice in animalistic fury as they spotted the two fugitives, who tried desperately to increase their pace. Buffy could see the fear in their bearing, but also their grim determination. She had just stepped forward to call them to shelter in the alley when the man moved into one of the scattered pools of illumination thrown by the streetlamps. Light flared off slicked back pale hair and highlighted a profile she knew almost as intimately as she knew her own face in the mirror. Her words died unspoken in her mouth.

"Spike," she whispered, and then realized who his companion must be. "And Druscilla. Oh god." Her legs weakened and she stumbled back against the wall for much needed support. She _was_ still in a nightmare - only this one was Spike's. This was Prague, and he and Druscilla would be captured and Dru nearly killed by the mob pursuing them. But this time, Dru _would_ be killed, in this warped retelling of Spike's memories and fears.

 _Let her die_ , whispered a cold voice in Buffy's mind. _She deserves it - and then Angel, Kendra, Giles and Mom will all be safe._ She shook her head angrily to clear it. This was not time travel, and this was not real - only a memory. Angel would still be gone and Kendra would still be dead no matter what she did here. But if this nightmare were allowed to play itself out to its dark conclusion, Spike - William - would suffer as though it were real. His anguish would feed the Nightmare Master and he would weaken as she had done. Without her intervention, he would eventually die - as she would have without his. Remembering what she had undergone trapped in her own nightmares, she knew she couldn't abandon him.

 _I am never, ever going to be able to explain this to anyone, she thought. I can't believe I'm really doing this._ She repeated to herself sternly that she was doing this only because she would need Spike's help to break free of the dreams. Ignoring the fears and the outraged scream of the Primal Slayer in her mind, Buffy stepped into the light. "Spike!" she shouted, waving one arm to attract his attention. "Over here!"

He looked up, saw her and the two of them redoubled their efforts to flee the pursuing mob, but Druscilla's flowing skirts tangled about her legs and sent her sprawling to the damp street. "Spike!" she cried, "don't leave me!"

"Never," he replied, lifting her bodily and breaking into a limping run towards the alley mouth and the promised sanctuary.

Buffy withdrew into the alley to scout potential escape routes. Further along, it branched into several smaller laneways, each containing a number of doorways, back entrances into various commercial and warehouse properties. She kicked open a few doors to serve as a distraction to their pursuers, then found one that could be easily blocked shut again from the other side. She waved Spike and Dru through, then barricaded the door. The two vampires clung desperately together. Buffy saw that Spike's amulet was still intact on his hand, but the centre stone was cracked and dark. He didn't show any sign of recognizing her.

The three of them found themselves in a warehouse storing unused shop equipment; display cases, shelving units and clothing racks filled the floor. The cavernous interior was divided on one side into two levels by a suspended platform. The upper level was jumbled with a collection of mannequins in various states of assembly - arms, legs and torsos piled haphazardly. Others more complete, clothed and unclothed, stood like blind sentinels overlooking the floor below. It was up into this forest of limbs that Buffy directed them.

"I don't want to go up there," Druscilla moaned piteously. "They want to take us apart. Stacked like cordwood for the winter and burned."

Buffy had no patience for her hysterical visions. "If you want to survive," she said to Spike harshly, "you get her up there and shut her up."

He snarled and thrust a fanged and bloodstained face into hers. "Who the hell are you to-"

"I'm the one who's going to save your ass," she interrupted brusquely. "Answers later, if we make it." Spike growled, but offered no further argument. He herded the reluctant Druscilla up the stairs into the concealment of the lifeless crowd, and Buffy followed closely behind. With any luck, anyone looking up into their hiding place would see them only as three more figures in the inanimate throng.

Restless minutes passed as the grumbling of the mob grew in the laneway outside the warehouse door. Buffy didn't dare to risk a look out over the edge of the platform, but heard glass breaking up and down the alley as the crowd vented its frustration. Spike clapped a hand quickly over Druscilla's mouth when stones shattered the windows on the floor below them.

A few people climbed in through the broken panes, looking for something to loot or vandalize after being deprived of the fun of killing vampires. Buffy tried to signal to Spike with her eyes the desperate need to keep quiet; he gave a sharp nod as if he understood. She steeled herself; fighting humans, even dream ones, was not how she ever wanted to use her abilities, but she would if given no other choice. Luck was with them, though; after a few cursory glances around, the vandals left, finding nothing in the warehouse to interest them.

Buffy released the breath she felt as though she had been holding for hours and turned to the others. Druscilla collapsed to the floor like a puppet with cut strings, clutching at her head, and Spike was instantly by her side murmuring soothing words and stroking her bare arms.

He looked up at Buffy with his feral face. "You saved us; I'll return the favour," he said. "Get out now and we'll not hurt you."

Dru gripped at his coat to draw him closer. "She walks wrong on the skin of the earth," she muttered, "can't you hear the lost angels singing?"

"What are you seeing, Dru?" Spike asked her. "What about the girl?"

"Power," she sighed.

With another caress, Spike released her and stood, advancing toward Buffy. His head tilted as he inspected her more closely. "Something familiar here," he said in a low voice. "Something I haven't felt since . . . Slayer!" he cried suddenly, lunging for her throat.

She whirled to evade his attack. Lacing the fingers of both hands together, she brought her fists down on the back of his neck as he flew past her, sending him face first into the floor. Before he could recover, she had dropped on top of him, pinning his arms to his sides with her legs and using one forearm to hold his shoulders down.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "How do you know my name? Why did you help us?"

"All very good questions that I'd love to answer, if you'd only-" her words were suddenly choked off by Druscilla's hands at her throat, dragging her back and off of Spike's prone form. Buffy swore at herself inwardly; just because Druscilla was _Miss Froot Loops_ most of the time didn't mean she could be safely ignored. She threw herself backwards into Dru's hold instead of resisting, catching her off guard and breaking free. She carried her movement into a back shoulder roll and pulled up in a crouch with her feet tucked under her.

Before she could recover further Spike had launched himself at her again. She landed hard on her back, the blow driving the air from her lungs. He straddled her hips, trapping her legs, and held her hands pinned beside her head. Buffy gasped for air and struggled to free herself, but his grip was too strong. Golden eyes assessed her coldly.

"Dru, my precious pet," he said, "come and see the treat Daddy's got for you. Your very own Slayer to taste."

Druscilla sidled up beside them and ran a black nail delicately along Buffy's throat. She flinched, but couldn't pull away. "I don't want her," Dru said abruptly. "She wants to take you away from me. She thinks you belong to her. Tell her to go away."

Spike shrugged. "She's always been a finicky eater," he said, as though he always indulged in casual conversation with his victims. "But you'll find I'm not so fussy." He bared his fangs and leaned forward.

Buffy cringed at this horrific parody of some of the times she'd been in his bed. There had to be some way to reach him, to snap him out of his nightmare - though it had rapidly become hers too. She had often wondered what would happen to people who died in their dreams, but she hadn't ever really wanted to be the one who found out. She sought his eyes with hers and whispered, "William . . ."

Druscilla shrieked; a banshee wail of loss.

Buffy watched relieved as the demon's face above her melted back into the man's and shocked recognition filled his eyes. "Buffy?" he asked, releasing her suddenly and backing away. "What am I doing?"

"It wasn't you," she replied, "it was your nightmare. The Nightmare Master's become linked to you now, instead of me. It wasn't you," she repeated for emphasis, seeing the growing horror in his face.

"It _was_ me," he contradicted, his voice shaking. "It was." He turned away. Buffy wanted to reach for him, to comfort him, but let her hand fall. She had no words for this. She felt the tingling in her skin that heralded the shift; it couldn't come fast enough for her.

"I thought he was mine, but he was yours all along," Druscilla cried, covering her face with her hands and rocking helplessly.

The scene ran like a watercolour in the rain and they were gone.


	23. Spike's Gift

**Spike's Gift**

The tower stood crazily in the distance against the indigo sky; the tinkertoy construction of a mad god. From here, all she could see were tiny figures like ants rushing about and over it. Not her nightmare, then, or she'd be in the thick of it. Buffy set off at a run to reach the tower and prevent whatever was going to go wrong this time.

As she made her way through the deserted streets, she kept her eyes on the tower, trying to discern what was happening at its summit. That slight figure at the edge of the cantilevered platform must be Dawn, she realized, and forced more speed from herself. Two others struggled on the walkway, and Buffy stifled a cry as one was suddenly thrown from the heights, black fabric fluttering about him but doing nothing to slow his meteoric fall.

 _Oh god - what if he dreams he died here?_ she wondered, her thoughts racing to challenge the speed of her thudding heart. _Would that destroy him? . . . kill him?_ But after his fall, the nightmare continued to play itself out.

Buffy could now hear Dawn's screams as she drew nearer the abandoned lot and the tower. Somewhere below, she and all her friends were fighting Glory and her minions. She hadn't made it up the tower in time to save Dawn before, but vowed that she would change that outcome this time.

All her determination, however, couldn't slow the unfolding events. Dawn's blood - _her_ blood - spilling from the heights, unlocked the door between dimensions. It flared a harsh, crackling electric blue, and hell entered the world. Misshapen beasts rode the air, while people and buildings all around were twisted into cruel dark parodies of the world she loved. And the only way now to close the door was if the blood of the key that had opened it stopped flowing. _Maybe this is my nightmare after all_ , she thought. _But I still won't sacrifice Dawn._

The sun began its climb into the sky at last, staining the world with red. Movement at the top of the tower again caught and held Buffy's attention, and she skidded to a stop. A small form flew from the edge - herself, she realized in shock - such a tiny figure, silhouetted against the first light of day. She saw herself suspended for a moment in space, and then plummeting into the heart of the maelstrom.

Buffy remembered everything about that instant of time as though it played out again in front of her. She had made her peace with the world and with her purpose in it. Her last words to Dawn had been for her friends to care for each other and to live - to live in this world she would buy them with her life. She remembered the fall and the blinding light and - most of all - the blazing pain, burning away every trace of her mortal self. And then she remembered the peace. The peace of knowing her job was done, that she was loved and could rest at last. Tears flowed down her face, unnoticed and unchecked.

The hell gate drew in on itself and vanished, as did all the changes it had wrought. The sudden silence was a greater shock to her ears than all the cacophony that had passed before.

Buffy came slowly into the lot at the base of the tower, dazed. Nothing had changed - from what she had been told by her friends, this was exactly how events had unfolded all those months ago - so what was she here to prevent? Her eyes were drawn to the tableau before her, to her own still and lifeless body lying in the rubble.

There was Tara, her mind newly restored by Willow's daring attack on Glory. The two of them leaned on each other, their faces crumpled with grief. There too was Xander, carrying the injured Anya cradled close against him. She could see his heart - the heart that had so often sustained all of them - breaking in his eyes. And Giles; dear, proper, oh-so-British Giles, fighting back his tears. Dawn joined them at the bottom of the stairs, moving stiffly from her ordeal, her face numb. She carried Buffy's last words for them to hear; whatever small comfort Buffy could offer them from beyond the world would come through Dawn. She could see her sister drawing strength from that knowledge, standing straight and wiping away tears - and Buffy loved her more than ever in that moment.

Beyond them, apart from them as always, a bright-haired, dark clad man collapsed to his knees and buried his face in his hands in a gesture of inconsolable sorrow that pierced her heart. She made her way forward slowly through the debris, unseen by anyone as the nightmare continued its inexorable course, until she reached his side. Buffy paused, and then knelt, her upraised hand trembling in the air between them. At last she reached for him, caressing a cheek wet with blood and tears, to turn his face towards hers.

"William," she murmured gently, almost tenderly. "I'm here. The nightmare's over. Wake up."

As her words sank in, he raised his eyes to her, blasting her with the naked emotion there. He clutched desperately at her as a drowning sailor might the last spar of his lost ship, pressed his face to her breast and sobbed her name. The world around them froze and drained of all colour like a photograph left too long in the sun.

Buffy held him for an eternity, tentatively stroking his hair until his sobs faded and his quaking shoulders stilled. The world around them remained tranquil and hushed, showing none of the signs they'd come to expect meant movement in the dream world, and she wondered if they had become trapped here forever.

"I don't understand," Buffy said uncertainly, when Spike had recovered and sat back wiping his eyes unselfconsciously. "I though our nightmares were about memories that were being made worse. This is exactly the way everything went - nothing here is worse than before."

Spike met her eyes squarely. "I couldn't keep my promise to you," he said quietly. "I didn't manage to protect Dawn. And because of that, you had to die." He shook his head. "I lived with that failure all summer. I patrolled and I took care of Dawn as best I could - and none of that made anything any better." _How would you make it worse?_ was the unspoken question he left hanging in the air between them.

Buffy wasn't ready to address this revelation. Instead, she looked around them to see that the light seemed to be dimming, in spite of what should have been a new day. Their surroundings had become more like a stage setting than reality. "What happens now?" she asked.

Spike got carefully to his feet. With the passing of the nightmare his injuries had vanished but he still felt weak. He reached down and helped Buffy to stand as well, then brought his hand to her cheek and brushed away the last teardrops clinging to her lashes. "We're a right pair, aren't we?" he said, smiling wryly. "I don't know."

A noise behind them drew their attention. Everything around them was dissolving into blankness, except for four figures. Tara, Willow, Dawn and Xander turned and began to stumble towards them. Buffy straightened, and reached unconsciously for Spike's hand. Whatever happened next, they would be dealing with it together.


	24. Dreamwalking

**Dreamwalking**

"Is this the start of some new nightmare?" Buffy asked as they watched the four figures of her friends draw nearer.

"This isn't how the others began," Spike replied. "And it's no dream of mine, unless we suddenly appear in Harris's basement again." He chuckled. "Now that _would_ be a nightmare."

"Especially if we had to see you wear a Hawaiian shirt again," Buffy added. "I don't think any of us would survive that."

Just then, Dawn broke away from the others and ran forward to embrace her sister. "Buffy!" she cried, "We've been so worried about you. Are you okay?"

Buffy returned the embrace hesitantly at first. "Dawn," she said slowly, "Is it really you? What are you doing here?"

"Of course it's me, silly," she replied. "It was all Xander's idea," she said, as the others came up to join them. "Tara had lost contact with you and we didn't know what to do. He turned up later that evening and when he found out, he kind of freaked."

"I did not freak out," Xander protested. "I seem to recall saying that we had to try something different, since Spike obviously hadn't managed to do the job." The two of them exchanged wary glances like fighters sizing each other up before a match.

"Don't even start," Buffy said with a sidelong glance at Spike, who subsided. "I was about ready to give up when William - Spike - found me," she said. "We changed the course of a few nightmares and kept hoping you would draw us out. I'm glad you're all here, but I'd feel a lot better if I knew where _here_ was, and which way was home."

Tara nodded. "I tried to bring you out, but there was something resisting my spell. It's probably because you had started fighting back in the dreams. Our only choice seemed to be to come after you and help from the inside."

"So where was this nightmare?" asked Willow, looking around at what little remained of the dream environment. "Anywhere we know?"

"It was where Glory was trying to open the door between dimensions," Buffy admitted. Only scattered rubble gave any evidence of the former presence of Glory's helltower, but Dawn, Xander and Willow looked distressed. Since Tara had only been returned to herself near the end of the battle, she was able to face the news with somewhat more equanimity.

"But that's awful," Willow said. "That you'd have to go through that again."

"It must have been terrible for you, Buffy," Dawn chimed in.

Buffy traded looks with Spike. Somehow it seemed entirely too intimate a piece of information to tell them that it had actually been _his_ nightmare. She simply nodded her acknowledgement. Spike said nothing.

"So what's the plan now?" Buffy asked Tara, who had been examining their environment with interest. The sky was a uniform cloudy grey, and what looked like thick walls of fog surrounded the empty lot. "It doesn't seem as though another nightmare is going to start any time soon. Unless you're afraid of rainy days," she added. She went on to fill in the others about the signs she and Spike had observed when the dream shifts occurred.

Without warning, a light mist of warm rain began to fall, and they all looked at each other, spooked. They ducked for cover from the rain in the shelter of a crazily tilted wall.

"Okay, everyone with a major wiggins," Xander said, raising his hand. One by one, the rest of the Scoobies followed suit.

"I wish we had a doorway to take us home," declared Willow, looking around expectantly. Nothing happened.

"How about a chocolate milkshake?" Dawn added. Still nothing changed. The rain began to come down more heavily.

"I'm sure it was just a coincidence," Buffy said. "It already looked like it was going to rain. It's not like I said anything about thunder and lightning-" Her words were cut off suddenly as a bright flash dazzled their eyes. A loud crash rent the air an instant later. Everyone turned and looked at her, wide-eyed.

"Say it again," Dawn urged. Buffy complied, and the effect was the same. Though everyone else tried repeatedly, their words seemed to have no influence on their environment.

"Not that I'd wish for a sunny day, love," Spike said at length, after everyone had marvelled at how Buffy could control the weather in the dream world. "But do you suppose you might . . ." He held out one hand, indicating the oppressive rainfall.

"Oh, right. 'It stopped raining'," she said. It didn't. Buffy looked at Spike and only shrugged.

"Well, it took a while to start," he replied supportively. Yet perhaps not surprisingly, within five minutes the rain had diminished and vanished, leaving the 'sky' as featureless as it had been when the others had arrived.

"Lucid dreaming," said Willow suddenly. "You know - when you're dreaming but almost awake and you can control what happens in your dreams."

"So I could just dream us a way out of here?" Buffy asked. "'The portal to take us all home is behind that fallen section of wall'," she declared, and then went to move the boards aside. There was nothing there but some scattered trash and pale, wizened grass that hadn't seen sunlight in days.

"Maybe you need to start with something smaller," Tara suggested. "Rain, thunder and lightning weren't all that unusual, given the way the sky looked when we got here. A portal appearing instantly might be too big a change for the rules of the dream."

"Smaller. Right," Buffy acknowledged. She looked around the empty lot and gathered her thoughts. A tingling sense of power enveloped her, and she found images spilling into her head. _Before the tower had been built, this was just an empty lot that sometimes people would cut through as a shortcut to the shops on the other side. That's what the fat man had done, but he found it difficult walking on the uneven ground and had paused to rest - just over there. When he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his sweating face, he had accidentally scattered a few coins as well, but hadn't noticed. They had lain beneath some scattered stones all this time. One of them was a 1961 silver dollar that he was going to give to his niece for her birthday, since she was interested in collecting coins . . ._

Buffy bent and moved some rocks aside, brushing loose dirt out of the depressions they had left. Her eye caught the liquid gleam of silver, and her hand shook as she reached out to pick up a heavy coin. Only a few spots of tarnish marred its surface, and she read the date with disbelief. It was the silver dollar she had seen moments before in her mind. She turned back to the others and held it up triumphantly.

Xander wasn't convinced. "That could have been there all along," he argued.

"Then how did Buffy know it was there?" Spike countered. "She made it appear where she wanted it to."

"Maybe that's the secret," said Tara. "The changes have to be something that could have been possible all along."

"That means we won't be able to create a gateway home by wishing for one," Willow pointed out. "If it has to be something possible, then only magic is going to create it."

"And we have no supplies," Tara finished unhappily. "The only sign of magic is our amulets that represent our consciousness against the dreams." The Scoobies looked at each other despondently. Buffy's success in changing the dream didn't seem so promising any more.

Spike's laughter shocked them all out of their introspection. "I swear it must be only dumb luck that let you beat me so many times," he said unsympathetically. "There's a shop full of magic supplies only half a dozen blocks from here in the real Sunnyhell, and all we have to do is have Buffy imagine our way there."

They looked at each other sheepishly, embarrassed that the idea hadn't occurred to them first. "If anyone tries to tell me I said this, I'll deny it ever happened," said Xander. "But Spike is right. We have to head for the Magic Box."

With Buffy and Spike leading the way, the group set out on the deserted streets of dream-Sunnydale. Every now and then Buffy would pause and consult her memory of the layout of the streets, but for the most part they kept a steady pace. It was Xander who first pointed out a disturbing trend when they were only two blocks from the store.

"These buildings are empty," he said, after peering into a number of darkened doorways. "I mean literally - there's nothing on the inside. They're hollow shells, like on a movie set or something."

Buffy frowned. "I've never been in them," she replied. "So I guess I can't just make up what's inside."

"You've been inside the Magic Box many times," Tara pointed out reassuringly. "You'll be able to recreate the inside of it as well as the outside."

"It's like that really old Star Trek episode I saw on the Sci-Fi channel last week," Xander commented. "You know, the one where they were at the OK Corral. The aliens took Kirk's memories about the old west, but he'd only read about it - so all the buildings only had front walls and hardly any details. And when Chekov got killed, he wasn't really killed but went back to the Enterprise."

Xander looked toward Spike as though the mere presence of a Y-chromosome should somehow guarantee he'd understand. The vampire lifted one dark brow laconically. "Don't get cable back at the crypt," he observed. "And besides, I don't speak geek."

"So what you're saying is the only way to get out of here is to get killed?" Dawn asked nervously.

"Let's try it first on Harris, then," Spike suggested.

"Very funny," he replied, obviously thinking it was nothing but.

"Ooh, I know that one," Willow interjected. "That's 'Spectre of the Gun' where they're kidnapped by the Melkotians to be tested to see if they're worthy of being contacted." Xander looked vindicated, but the others were just puzzled. "Chekov didn't die because he was too interested in this girl to pay attention to the things around him. Spock had to hypnotize the others so they would realize it wasn't real and the bullets couldn't hurt them."

"Guys, this isn't helping," Tara chided them all gently. "We have to play by the rules of this dream world in order to find a way out. I'm sure Buffy can do it."

"I wish _I_ were sure," Buffy said gloomily. "The more I think about it, the less I can remember. What's on the shelves nearest the door, for example?" she asked. "Is it the scented candles, or are those by the cash register?" She sat despondently on a nearby bus stop bench. The others gathered around, not knowing what to say.

"All this nattering's given me an idea," said Spike, moving to one knee in front of Buffy. "Will you lend me that coin you found, pet?"

Buffy dug the silver dollar out of her pocket and handed it to him. He stripped the rings from his left hand and thrust them into his jeans pocket. Holding the coin in one hand, he leaned forward with his other hand on Buffy's thigh and looked up at her. "Do you trust me?"

She drew her lower lip between her teeth and frowned uncertainly, but finally nodded. Spike held his left hand out level between them and slowly let the silver dollar walk across the back of his knuckles. The coin winked light as it flipped smoothly across his hand. He captured it as it looked about ready to fall, and then drew it under his fingers to start the motion again on the other side of his hand. Buffy watched the repetitive motion intently. Spike waited until he felt her muscles relax. No one spoke while they waited to see what he had in mind.

"You're headed into the Magic Box, love," he said, his voice pitched low for her ears alone. "Tell me what it's like there."

"When you open the door, it rings that bell. I hate that damn bell," she said suddenly, perhaps recalling several abortive attempts at working in the store.

"Mmm-hmm," he murmured encouragingly. "Tell me more about the store."

"There's the smell," she volunteered. "Candles and herbs and other mystical stuff all mixed together - kind of 'mustical'," she giggled abruptly.

Spike wondered at the giddy schoolgirl side she had unexpectedly exposed. This from a woman he had always found to be painfully intense in the emotions she was willing to reveal to him. "What do you see on the shelves?" he prompted again, trying to maintain his own focus.

Little by little he coaxed a description of the store out of her. Details she hadn't even realized she knew spilled from her lips. She talked continually for some time, until her voice grew hoarse. Once she began to repeat herself Spike brought the coin to a halt, stretching out his cramped fingers. He lifted his other hand to her chin and tipped her chin up until her eyes met his. "You can stop, love. Think you can get us into the shop now?"

Buffy nodded mutely, stunned. From where she had taken a seat on the sidewalk, Dawn asked the question that was on everyone's minds. "Wow, Spike - where did you learn how to do that? That was awesome!"

He levered himself to his feet, rubbing his palm firmly with his opposite thumb. "You live a hundred years or so, you get bored," he said. "Dru always was fond of parlour tricks," he added softly, when Buffy looked up at him.

The group resumed their trek through the dream streets. Buffy was so focussed on maintaining her clear vision of the Magic Box that she jumped, startled, when Spike reached for her hand. She looked self-consciously over her shoulder at her friends, and then allowed his fingers to close gently around hers as they walked. The rest of the trip was made in silence.

When they reached the shop door, Buffy paused to take a deep breath before pushing it open. The bell rang. It was as though they had stepped back into reality; the shop seemed identical in every respect to the one they knew and she sighed with relief.

"Way to go, Buffster!" Xander exclaimed, clapping her on the shoulder. "I knew you could do it." The others crowded around with their congratulations as well. She looked at Spike who was standing back from the press, and shaped 'thank you' with her lips. He only shrugged deprecatingly.

Before long, they settled into the routine they'd perfected over several years and dozens of crises, large and small. Willow and Tara quickly laid out the parameters of the type of spell they would be looking for and coordinated the collected information. Xander, Dawn and Buffy pored over the requisite texts, looking both for spells and for information that described their current predicament. The resulting pile of books was depressingly small.

Spike refused to get involved and instead sat on the couch, crossing his booted feet at the ankles and spreading his arms out across the back. "Point me at something I can kill," he said, "and I'll take care of it for you. Until that time, I'll be waiting right here." Cigarette after cigarette soon littered the floor beside him. When Dawn scolded him, he laughed. "It's not real, Bit. Wouldn't matter if I burned the place down." But he got up and found a dish to use as an ashtray.

Some time later, Buffy shoved her chair back from the table and stretched her arms out above her head. "This has got to be payback for all the homework I didn't do in school," she complained, twisting in the chair to ease her sore back.

Spike came up behind her and dug his fingers firmly into her shoulders, eliciting a pleased groan from her. "I know just the thing to take the kinks out, love," he suggested with a smile.

"What? No!" Buffy exclaimed, standing up so abruptly her chair tipped backwards behind her.

"I meant a quick bout in the training room," he explained. "But if you've got something else in mind . . ." His grin implied it probably hadn't been too far from his thoughts either.

She moved out of his reach and his smile vanished. "So, what then? I'm only welcome when there's no one around to find out?" He waved his hand, taking in the four at the table who were studiously ignoring this exchange. "They all know."

Spike advanced on her slowly. "There's got to be some give and take, love. I'm getting tired of being the one you come to when you get a craving, but who's shut out any time you're not interested. You told me you wanted to be with me, that you needed me; well, maybe I need you too sometimes. Or is it only that you're ashamed of being seen with me?"

Buffy looked sideways at the others and gave a quick jerk of her head. Tara and Willow took the hint and quickly left the table, heading for the upper level in search of more books. Xander was a little slower on the uptake, but Dawn dragged him away to the front of the store.

"I'm not ashamed," she insisted, when they had some privacy.

"Ah. So if I do this, then," he said, running his fingers down the closure of her blouse, plucking at the buttons. "It doesn't bother you at all."

She grabbed his hand before it could go any lower and involuntarily glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. "I just don't feel the same need to be an exhibitionist that you do," she admonished. "Some things should be kept private, is all. It doesn't mean I don't want you, or need you - because I do." Buffy moved into the circle of his arms. "I'm worried about what the Nightmare Master is up to," she said. "It's been too long without some kind of attack on us."

"All the more reason to take your mind off of things for a while," Spike persisted, tightening his hold.

"No," she said firmly. "This isn't the right time; even you have to see that. We have to be ready to fight at a moment's notice, and find a spell to get us out of here before then if we can. When we get home, then we can take all the time we need."

"When we get home then," he agreed, accepting her unspoken promise.

"Uh, guys?" Dawn's shaky voice drew their attention away from each other. "You need to come see this." Everyone joined her at the front window of the store. Instead of the streetscape of the dream-Sunnydale, they faced a dark landscape of forbidding hills. In the distance, a coal black tower thrust like an accusing finger into a lightning blasted sky.

"I think we might be out of time."


	25. Prelude to a Battle

**Prelude to a Battle**

Buffy stared out the window of the store, a growing look of horror on her face. "I did this, didn't I?" she whispered. "When I said the Nightmare Master could attack us at any time."

Willow laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "I don't think you could have had such an effect if he wasn't already planning this, Buffy."

"We don't know what influence I have here," Buffy insisted. "God, even the most casual comment could kill us all."

"You'll all die screaming, you know," a cold voice said conversationally from behind them.

Buffy whirled around, but the only person there was Spike, looking down casually at his feet. Her temper flared. "That is _so_ not funny, Sp-" He raised his head to look at her, and his eyes were bottomless black liquid.

"Kyuumu are summoned. There is no escaping them," he continued, oblivious to her horror. At once, his face surged into its demonic form and he lunged at Willow, fangs bared.

"No!" Buffy shouted, diving to interpose herself and knock him backwards as Xander pulled Willow to safety. They faced off in the open area between shelves.

"William," she said softly, trying to find again the connection between them. "Come back to me - to us. Don't let him trap you in dreams." His only response was a cold laugh and another attack.

Grim-faced, Buffy countered with a sharp blow to his jaw with the heel of her hand that snapped his head back. She moved in and hooked one leg behind his and pushed him to the floor, where Xander helped her pin him. Whatever had possessed him didn't have his skill in a fight, but sheer strength still made him a danger to them all while it lasted.

"I knew that sending him after you was a bad idea," Xander puffed, breathless as he wrestled to maintain his hold on the struggling vampire. " _He's_ going to get us all killed."

Buffy ignored him and spoke directly to Spike. "William, it's Buffy." She took his contorted face in her hands and looked deeply into his disturbing black eyes for any sign of the man who had fought through so many dreams at her side. "William!"

He only snarled and snapped at her. Regretfully, she let loose with a two-handed blow to the side of his head that knocked him unconscious. She and Xander dragged him up from the floor and into a nearby chair. After some rummaging, Dawn turned up a spool of packing twine, and Buffy and Xander bound Spike firmly.

 _Is it possible to have a nightmare_ in _a nightmare? Wait . . ._ Buffy wiped sweat-damp hair out of her face and turned to Tara, who stood comforting Willow. "His amulet! It was broken in one of our dreams," she explained, turning Spike's hand as far as she could in his bonds so the damage could be seen. "Is there anything you can do to fix it?"

Tara nodded her understanding. "That would make him susceptible to the Nightmare Master's control. I'll see if we can find something." She and Willow began to scour the shelves for the necessary materials.

Spike regained consciousness in the chair some time later and began muttering foul imprecations and threats in a low voice.

"Buffy," Dawn pleaded, moving away from where she had been at his side. "Do something."

Not knowing how long it would take Willow and Tara to find supplies to repair the amulet, Buffy had to take a decidedly non-magical approach. She pulled a silk scarf from a display and proceeded to gag Spike securely. "I'm sorry," she murmured after tightening the cloth. "We'll get you back, I promise." She ran her fingers gently over his cheek and into his hair.

"Oh, I don't know," Xander said unkindly from where he had taken a seat on the couch in the middle of the store. "It seems to me that the true Spike's been revealed at last."

Buffy turned an angry glare his way. "Don't you start," she snapped. "Just . . . don't."

Xander threw his hands up in exasperation. "Am I the only one here that can still see 'evil dead guy'?" he asked plaintively. "Even if I have to admit that he's done some good for us, how can you want to be with him? Do you love him?"

"It's . . . it's complicated," Buffy stammered.

"How, exactly?" he demanded. "You love him or you don't, right?"

"He . . . loves me."

"Buffy, he's got no soul. How can he love you? He'll only hurt you in the end."

"Oh, and the people who _do_ love me never hurt me at all," she retorted. "Dawn and I, we hurt each other all the time. Lacking a soul's no prerequisite." She got up from where she knelt at Spike's side and joined Xander on the couch. "Haven't there been times when you and Anya have torn at each other's hearts? As annoying as she can be sometimes, I've heard her voice when she talks about you. There's no one else she'd rather be with. She was a demon for a thousand years, yet you still love her."

Xander fidgeted uncomfortably on the couch. "But she's human now," he insisted. "It's not the same."

"So, it would be better if I were sleeping with someone human, then, like . . . Warren?" she inquired, her expression at odds with the lightness of her tone.

"Yes. No! That's not a fair comparison!" he exclaimed.

"Why not? He fits your criteria. He's human, and alive - so presumably has a soul, right?" She laughed darkly. "He should be just the ticket."

"Buffy, you don't understand," he began.

"No, Xander, it's _you_ that doesn't understand," she interrupted. "All of you. You've been after me to _get over it_ , to just snap out of being sorry that I was dragged out of heaven because you thought it was a good idea at the time. Not _one_ of you has any idea of exactly _how hard_ it is to be here. To wake up every day and face a world that's harsher and colder than where I was. I hurt. I hurt every minute of every day that I'm awake, because of you. Because you loved me."

She turned to look back at Spike, whose dark eyes had never left her as she had moved about the store. "Except that when I'm with Spike, I can forget a little. He can make me enjoy being alive again, for a while, and doesn't resort to cheerleader tactics." A hesitant smile crossed her lips as she looked at him.

"I haven't forgotten what he is or what he's done. Maybe it's just me being selfish, but I've decided to take what _I_ need for a change. I admit that it rates pretty high on the Buffy irony meter that it takes a dead guy to make me feel alive again, yeah - but I never claimed to be normal."

Buffy sighed noisily as she turned back to face Xander, taking his reluctant hands in hers. "I love you guys - I do. I hope you know that - if only because we're all so hard on each other at times."

"We only wanted you to be happy, Buffy," he said softly.

"I know," she replied. "Can you deal with it if I say that right now, what it takes is being with him?"

"If it means you won't go around looking for any more towers to jump from, I guess I can deal." Xander said, drawing her into a warm embrace. "As long as you don't expect me to be crazy about the idea."

"Agreed," she said, returning his hug tightly enough to make his ribs creak.

"Good news, guys," Tara carolled suddenly from the loft. "I think I've found something that will repair Spike's amulet." She made her way quickly down the stairs.

Behind her, Willow began to re-shelve the books they had pulled out in their search. Several of the heavier tomes had fallen over, and she had to reach in with both hands to lift them back into position. Something cold and wet suddenly yielded under her fingers.

Willow's screams and Spike's muffled laughter fought for ascendancy in their ears.


	26. Bellatrix

**Bellatrix**

Buffy leapt to her feet and ran for the stairs, pushing past Tara. A living grey-green tide surged down the stairs and over the edge of the loft to fall with repulsive squashing noises to the floor below. Hundreds - or perhaps even thousands - of frogs carpeted the floor of the loft, squirming wetly against each other, burying Willow under their cold shapes. Buffy began kicking them aside, shovelling them away with both hands trying to reach her friend.

"Ranae delenda sunt!" Willow shouted suddenly, and a wave of magic licked out from her; the frogs shivered into dust and vanished. She looked up, trembling, eyes black with unspent power, to meet Tara's horrified gaze over the edge of the loft. "Tara, I-"

Tara backed away down the stairs, her expression closed. Willow fell back to the floor, pressing her face into her hands. Buffy could only hold her as she rocked and cried.

When Willow had calmed down and dried her tears, the two of them descended again to the lower level into an uncomfortable silence. Buffy looked around at the averted faces, seeing the sidelong glances and how they sidled away when she met their gaze head on. Willow squirmed beside her at this show of mistrust, her eyes so downcast and miserable that Buffy wanted to scream. She found herself in one of those rare moments of clarity when everything became so sharp and detailed it seemed the world would cut her if she moved.

"That's enough," she snapped, drawing everyone's attention. "This guilt-trip attitude is not going to help us get out of here. I'm beginning to think it's going to take a lot more than my imagination to get us out of this situation. If that means I have to ask Willow to handle magic again, and face the consequences later, then that's what I'll ask."

She drew a deep breath and continued. "What good does it do if Willow manages to keep her promise, but we're trapped here?" she asked. "Even if she uses magic, we may not all make it out of here. Or we might. And that's the only situation in which any of this might even come close to being appropriate. Let's save the recriminations until we actually have the luxury, shall we?"

Buffy turned to Tara. "Tara, you said you could repair Spike's amulet? Now would be a good time. Dawn, you and Xander keep helping Will research on the spells we can use to attack or get us out of this mess. Whatever she needs, you get - got it?"

"We got," Xander replied, practically snapping a salute. Dawn didn't even venture a protest.

 _Channelling my inner drill sergeant_ , she thought. _Works like a charm._

Spike gave Tara no little trouble, writhing so vigorously in his bonds attempting to evade her touch that the chair was rocking dangerously onto two legs. Buffy moved to help her hold him down. After a number of attempts, she finally settled on using her own weight to hold the chair down by straddling his legs. She pinned his arms tightly to his sides by wrapping her arms around him. "This had better not take too long," she warned Tara. "I'm not sure how long I'll be able to hold him."

Some roguish, trouble-making part of her brain found a moment to note that whatever was controlling Spike's mind, his body still responded to her presence as it always had. She could feel him growing hard beneath her and her hips involuntarily rocked in reply. _This would be a lot more fun without the audience - and the nightmare possession is a major turn-off, too_ , she thought, before attempting to banish her frivolous, lascivious self to the base of her brain where it belonged.

"Done," Tara said from behind the chair where she had been working on the amulet on Spike's bound hand. "Call to him, Buffy. See if you can bring him back."

Buffy released her hold around Spike's torso; sliding her hands up to his shoulders so she could lean back and see his face. "William," she crooned gently, "wake up. Come back. It's all been a bad dream and I'm waiting for you right here."

She watched in wonder as the black depths of his eyes slowly resolved back to glacial blue. His stare was fixed at first, until he recognized her and what her body so close was doing to his. His head darted forward as suddenly as a serpent strike and drove his mouth onto hers. In an instant she had curled her fingers tightly in the hair at the back of his neck and was responding passionately. _I must be depraved. Wasn't I the one just telling him I wasn't an exhibitionist? That this wasn't the right time? We could be attacked and killed any minute, and all I can think about is how good it feels to-_

"Geez, you two," said Dawn, looking up from the pile of books and magical supplies on the table. "Get a room, would you?"

Buffy reluctantly broke away from Spike's lips. "I thought I'd lost you," she whispered, resting her forehead against his, the better to take in those eyes. _And I thought I was afraid about what would happen to me in these dreams._

"Maybe you _should_ lose me. I haven't been much more than a liability this trip," he said, clearly angry with himself.

She drew back and stared at him, mock sternly. "Are you trying to make me lose my temper and beat your wimpy English butt for you? You aren't going anywhere, except with me, off to do something monumentally stupid and dangerous. Is that clear?"

His lip curled in a lazy smile at this sign of her affection. "Yes love," he replied.

"Cut him loose," she directed Xander, getting up from Spike's lap.

"About time," Xander muttered under his breath as he set to work with a knife to cut Spike's bonds. "This is about getting us out of here, not fulfilling Spike's fantasies."

"Not to worry, Harris," he mocked. "We crossed this particular one off the list some time ago. Still, it's always nice to revisit the classics, don't you think?" He made no effort to disguise the effects that Buffy's proximity had had on him; in fact, he seemed positively ready to flaunt it.

"Numbers one and two on the list of things I really don't need to know." Xander stood up, dropping the cut sections of twine to the floor. "If you ever do anything to hurt her, I'll come by and stake you myself."

"If I ever step over the line she's set, she'll take care of me herself." Spike replied, standing and rubbing his wrists as though that action would restore his nonexistent circulation. "I'm hers, you understand. Hers to love . . . hers to kill, if it ever has to come to that. She knows that as well as I do." With an insolent toss of his head, Spike dismissed Xander and anything else he might have to say, in favour of moving to the window to stand behind Buffy as she surveyed the dark landscape outside the window. "What's the plan, love?"

He brought one hand to the back of her neck and kneaded firmly at the tight muscles he found there. She arched, cat-like, back into the pressure of his fingers. _Starved for touch. Both of us. Only a week apart from her and it's years too long. I swear I'll kill anyone who tries to keep us apart after this, chip or no._

"I have to get us out of here," she said, apropos of nothing. "I'll do anything I can, use anyone I have to, in order to make that happen, and not apologize for it. What kind of a person does that make me?"

"Assuming that's not just a rhetorical question, pet, I'd say it makes you a warrior - and a leader. People will do what you tell them to because they know that by doing so they stand the best chance of surviving." He leaned in closer and nuzzled her neck, making her shiver - and not because of the temperature. "I know _I'd_ follow you anywhere."

"In your case," she retorted, "you're definitely thinking with the wrong head again." She laughed, but the light-hearted moment passed quickly. "Come on, let's see what we can contribute."

"Know what I'd like to contribute," he said on a soft growl, but offered no protest as she drew him back to the group.

"I'm tired of waiting here while he attacks us at his leisure. I say I take the fight to him." Buffy said to the others gathered at the table. "Will, do you remember the spell we used to defeat Adam? The one that linked you, Xander and Giles to me? I think something like that might be what I need to take on the Nightmare Master - because I don't think any one of us could face him alone. See what you can find."

"Gotcha," Willow replied. "A little _e pluribus unum_ coming up."

"It's not really the same spell," Willow explained a short while later. "This one doesn't just pull a few talents from each person, it draws on their actual life force - since you'll probably need everything you can get."

"Then how do I help?" Spike growled, leaning forward threateningly. "Not being on the living team."

Uh, well . . . I can add a twist to it to draw on magical essence too," she added, looking uncertainly at him. "That should do it."

"Better." He subsided back into his chair, placated for the moment.

"Sounds dangerous," Buffy commented. She was disturbed at how easily Willow had slipped on the mantle of dark magic again.

"Oh, it is," Willow confirmed, with an unmistakable undertone of dark glee in her voice. Tara looked away. "If you have to use it, the rest of us are essentially incapacitated. And if you're killed . . . so are we. But if we get into a situation where you actually need to use it, we'd be unlikely to survive _without_ using it. Still interested?"

"Willow . . . Buffy, this is old magic. Wild magic," Tara protested. "Beyond just black and white. It's not something we should be trying."

"We may not have a choice," Buffy replied bluntly, then turned back to Willow. "How long does it take to cast?"

"I can do all the preliminary spellcasting here, and set it up so that all it takes from you is a trigger word. Say half an hour at the outside." Willow got up and rummaged in the collection of manuscripts and papers littering the floor in front of the bookcase, returning with a large, yellowed scroll.

"From this parchment we choose a symbol for everyone to represent how we're linked to Buffy. Then during the ritual itself, we all take turns to draw our symbols onto her to complete our connections."

"Fingerpaint on Buffy. This could be my new favourite game," Spike said with a grin. "Beats the hell out of Parcheesi, anyway."

"Spike-" Buffy began warningly - though to her chagrin she thought her tone sounded less like _Spike you pig_ , and a lot more like _oh, yes please_ than she had intended.

"I know, Slayer. Oink, oink." _Made you smile, at least. That'll do._

Willow unrolled the stiff parchment across the table, pinning the corners beneath some of the other books to keep it flat. "Look at these symbols," she directed them, with a wave of one hand.

They all leaned in around the table to get a better view, examining the parchment. _Love, death, fear,_ and _friendship_ were just some of the labels for the strange angular shapes scattered across it - the range was dizzying.

"How do we know what symbol to choose?" Dawn wanted to know.

"When I say the cantrip, you hold out your hand over the parchment. There will be one symbol that attracts you more than any other - and that will be the one for you. And it's possible for more than one person to choose the same symbol," she added in explanation.

"I'll go first, then, shall I?" Spike ventured. Willow nodded, and he extended his hand, fingers splayed, over the brittle surface. His eyes strayed across the symbols inscribed there and he sent fervent wishes to whatever powers would listen. Behind him, Willow murmured a sibilant phrase and he felt his fingers drawn, like iron to a lodestone, down to the paper's surface where they stuck fast.

"Love," Willow read from the page, and set him free. "Traced over her heart, of course."

Spike smiled widely in relief, looking for all the world like a boy who had just taken first prize in some contest at the local fair. He sat himself on the couch to await the others' results.

Xander stepped up next, unwilling to seem reluctant to try anything Spike would. He stretched out his hand; Willow repeated the words and his fingers found his own symbol.

"Loyalty," Willow said. "Palms of both her hands."

He straightened, looking smug and daring Spike to comment.

Tara moved forward before either of them could start something. She hesitated a moment, then, letting her breath sigh out between her lips, put herself into Willow's power.

"Mentor, or guide," Willow read, and frowned. That wasn't what she would have predicted. "It should be drawn on the top of Buffy's head."

Dawn's reading left Willow even more confused. At first her hand didn't seem to respond to the invocation at all. Only after several minutes had passed was it drawn reluctantly down to the paper surface. "Blood," Willow intoned. "Over the heart."

"That's because we're blood relatives," Buffy put in, her voice unnaturally bright. "You know, that good Summers blood . . ."

"You're probably right," Dawn replied with a weak smile, before joining Spike on the couch. He slipped a friendly arm around her shoulder.

"And finally . . . friendship for me," Willow indicated. "Drawn on your forehead. Just give me a few minutes to catch my breath, and we'll perform the spell proper. Make sure you can draw your symbol correctly when the time comes."

The time passed quickly, each of them diligently practicing their chosen symbols while Willow chalked a pentagram on the floor of the store. She directed each of them to a position on one of the points. Before guiding Buffy to her place at the centre of the pentagram, Willow told her the word that would trigger the spell and made sure she could pronounce it properly. Declaring herself satisfied, she took up her own point and raised her arms in supplication to unknown powers.

"Six are we, we desire to be one. Alive . . . and undead . . . we come together to join our life and essence in one vessel, our champion, the Slayer."

One by one they came forward and traced their symbols on Buffy's forehead and hands. Friendship, loyalty, love - Spike took her face in his hands and added a fierce, possessive kiss.

"Out of many, we shall be one. Six spirits shall reside in one flesh, and one mind shall rule them all. We will become forever. We implore thee; hold us now in thy grasp.

"So mote it be." For a moment, golden bands of light linked the five standing at the pentagram's points to Buffy, who stood transfixed at its centre. She flung her head back in a soundless wail as the energy pierced her. The light grew almost intolerably bright to their eyes, and then flared and died as quickly as it had appeared. Willow staggered in place and dropped her arms.

"Is that all?" Dawn was the first to break the silence. "I don't feel any different."

"You won't. Not unless Buffy has to use the spell," Willow explained, between ragged breaths. "I left the triggering word out of the incantation; it isn't complete until she says it."

Buffy stood silent in the pentagram, wrapped in her own thoughts. Spike would have taken her into his arms, but she held up a hand and forestalled him. "Is there a reason to stay here any longer?" she asked at last. "Because I'm really feeling the urge now to go kick some nightmare ass."

"Now _that's_ a woman after my unbeating heart," Spike beamed.

"The tower seems to be the power locus here," Tara ventured. "I expect that any portal or passage back to the conscious world will be there."

"Then we're heading for that tower," Buffy declared. "Spike and I will take point. Willow, you and Tara will flank us, to take out anything that comes at us from the sides or tries a magical attack. Xander-"

"I know," he sighed. "Dawn and I stay here, because we don't have any superhero fighting skills or magical powers."

"No. We leave no one behind. You're with Dawn behind us." She took his hands. "I need you to protect her. If anything gets past us, you're my last hope. I know I can count on you."

"Forever," he breathed, overwhelmed by her trust.

"Good. Take whatever weapons you know how to use, we're not staying a minute longer in this place."


	27. Revelations Book 1

**Revelations Book 1**

Xander clanked as he walked; he had strung so many knives and hand axes from his belt that his pants threatened to fall down. Spike's axe looked as though it might topple him at any moment, but he clung to it with a covetous grin. Buffy had taken the usual complement of stakes, figuring that her nightmares usually involved vampires, but had added a two handed sword in a sheath on her back and a couple of throwing knives for non-vampire threats. Even Dawn got in on the action with a smaller sword than her sister's, though she now looked as though she regretted choosing something so heavy. Tara and Willow had eschewed any physical weapons in favour of their more formidable mental ones. Together they must have made quite an impressive display.

They had been travelling into the withered hills for what seemed like hours - but might have been only minutes, watches not being among the items they had imagined for themselves in this dream. They were feeling as though they were more in danger from boredom than from the Nightmare Master's minions, when Spike came to an abrupt halt. "Bloody hell," he hissed. "That's not a tower, it's a damn _tree_."

Buffy squinted into the gloom. "How can you be sure?" she asked. "I can't make out anything at this distance."

"Seeing in near darkness is just another of my many skills, love. I told you that you didn't appreciate me," he said with a grin entirely too cheerful for someone trapped in a nightmare world.

"How could a tree be that big?" she wondered, ignoring his dig at her.

"It actually makes more sense. That it's a tree, I mean," Tara said, flushing when all their faces turned her way in curiosity. "Humans have been having nightmares for tens of thousands of years, long before we were building structures."

"We dream too," Spike interjected. "We demons. And we've been around even longer, in one form or another."

Tara nodded acknowledgement. "So there's no reason to limit it to human structures, even."

"You know, it sounds an awful lot like the Norse legend of the world tree Yggdrasil," Willow added. "It passed through and supported all the worlds of creation. It's part of one of the oldest of genesis stories. Maybe the early Vikings saw the tree in their dreams."

"A tree appears in a number of religions," Tara continued. "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, or the Bo tree under which Prince Siddhartha received his revelations. It's a powerful symbol - of an almost primeval magic."

Xander found himself trading an eye-rolling glance with Spike and Dawn, who clearly shared the sentiment that there could, in fact, be worse torments than never ending nightmares.

Uncertainty flickered momentarily across Buffy's features. "If the Nightmare Master is that old and powerful, then how can just six of us defeat him?"

"The Slayer magic is nearly as old," Spike said suddenly, infuriated with Tara and Willow for provoking Buffy's hesitation.

"I don't have any magic," she said, looking to him in confusion.

"A Slayer doesn't _have_ magic," he clarified, reining in his temper for her sake. "She _is_ magic - as old as humanity is, at least. _There's_ all the power you'll need."

"Where did you learn so much about Slayers, Spike?" Xander asked sarcastically, stung that Spike should so easily switch sides to join the scholars. "Did you get hold of a Slayer handbook somehow?"

"Killed two of them, didn't I?" Spike retorted.

"And this should make us trust you?" Xander was just as quick with his own rejoinder.

"It should make you believe me. Know your enemy, yeh? Uh, former enemy," he amended, with an apologetic glance aside at Buffy. She nodded impatiently, acknowledging that she recognized the past - and still wanted him in her present. He restrained himself from indulging in the flights of poetic fancy this encouraged. _Get on with it, right._ He focussed his next words only on her.

"Legend has it that the first Slayer was a powerful demon, called by the shadowmen and born into the body of a girl. They wanted her to be able to protect the tribes from the nasties like yours truly that would otherwise have killed them all." For an instant, his eyes glowed yellow and sharp teeth gleamed in his grin. "Those blokes were the first watchers. They chose a girl so as to have some hopes of controlling the demon, I figure, and there's only _supposed_ to be one called at a time because they're so bloody chaotic and dangerous. Wild magic, like you said," he nodded to Willow and Tara, who were listening raptly. Buffy, strangely, didn't seem upset at the idea that there was a demonic basis to her powers. _You always wondered why I said we two belong together. Now you know._

"I'm not a demon," Buffy protested mildly. Concerns about what she might or might not be were pushed aside by the job at hand, and she was impatient to continue.

"No love, you're as human as the rest of them," he said, gesturing around with the head of his axe. "But that's not _all_ you are. And since you've been brought back, you know you've changed somehow."

"I explained that to her," Tara said firmly. "It's a side effect of the resurrection spell, nothing more. Some minor changes on a cellular level that fool your chip."

Spike sneered at the suggestion. "Oh, right. Like you really believe that's all it is. Doesn't that seem a little simplistic to you? When I died, I came back a vampire. Death's not a minor change."

Buffy stared into the distance, letting the conversation flow around her. A few weeks ago, she had torn into Spike for suggesting anything of the sort. Now she was rapt with a new sense of purpose that settled serenity over her like a familiar and well-loved comforter. If that was coming from changes when she had died and was reborn - again - then she for one would welcome it, whatever the source.

She watched Spike and Tara arguing and nearly laughed when Spike pinched at the bridge of his nose with his fingers in frustration. _He reminds me of Giles when he does that, the way he used to push his glasses up. Don't think Spike would appreciate the comparison, though._

"I believe there's something to both of your ideas, Spike," she cut them off before Willow joined the fray and things degenerated into a shouting match. "It could explain a lot about what I can do, and why I seem to be stronger now than ever. But this isn't the time for Slayer self-discovery - we need to get moving again. If I can't win, I can at least go down trying."

She looked around the group and her face contracted in a puzzled frown. "Where's Dawn?"

Dawn kicked idly at the clumps of dusty sod at the base of one of the many hillocks. She wasn't at all surprised that her absence hadn't been noticed yet; Willow and Tara could ignore a minor natural disaster when they started in on discussions of the tedious minutiae of magic, and Xander was all wrapped up in anger and envy at Spike - nothing new there. And of course, Spike and Buffy - she was amazed that they were still able to focus on anything besides each other right now. Still, she figured it was about damn time that Buffy admitted she was in love with Spike. Dawn found him to be a vast improvement over Buffy's _last_ vampire boyfriend. Angel had always looked at her with the exact same suspicious expression that Buffy used when she smelt to see if a carton of milk had gone bad. _Not_ really the look for inspiring affection.

A rough scraping sound made her look up from her introspection to see a female figure moving towards her - Tara, sent to retrieve the prodigal, she assumed.

"Dawn, honey?" the woman asked - _not_ Tara, Dawn realized with a shudder. Her blood began to do a fair imitation of ice water, complete with good-sized ice cubes.

"M-Mommy?" she whimpered.

"I can't believe she'd just walk off," Buffy was saying. "What was she thinking? She should know better than this by now."

Spike shrugged casually. "She probably just wanted to get away from the old folks' rambling again," he volunteered.

"You are _not_ allowed to take her side in this, Spike," Buffy said warningly.

"Note to self for future reference - fright makes you testy."

"Get stuffed," she replied. "This isn't funny."

"See?" He fixed her with a thousand-watt grin. "Don't worry pet, we'll find her. She can't have gone far."

A scream rent the dank air, wiping the smile instantly from his face, and they all set off at a run towards the source.

"Get away from me. You can't be real." Dawn gritted her teeth and lifted her sword in both hands.

"But I _am_ real, honey. You wanted me to come back, and here I am." Not-Joyce advanced on her slowly. "You know," she winked conspiratorially, " I wasn't really dead when you buried me. You knew, but you let them do it anyway. I dug myself out when I heard you calling me." And she smiled, revealing tumbled-gravestone teeth clotted with dark soil.

Dawn screamed.

"I'll stay with you always, honey."

Buffy came pelting around from behind a concealing hill followed closely by Spike. She stopped so suddenly on seeing her mother's form that only his inhuman reflexes kept him from crashing into her. The colour drained from her face and she swayed unsteadily. "Mom? No-"

"She's not real!" Dawn yelled, but Buffy still couldn't force her body to move.

Spike pushed past her to confront not-Joyce himself, lifting his axe. She turned to him with a pleasant, perfectly ordinary smile, and said "Why Spike! How nice to see you again. Did you manage to work things out with your girlfriend?"

Agony arced a hot silver wire between his temples, and he staggered back, clutching his head. "Bloody hell," he gasped. "I _know_ she's not real." Another attempt netted him the same result and he howled. "Sodding chip! Can't tell a real human from a dream one? Fucking waste of taxpayer money . . ."

"Protect Dawn," Buffy shouted, and advanced. He had no choice but to fall back and obey.

Buffy confronted her mother's apparition. "You're not our mother. You're only another of the Nightmare Master's creations, and I won't let you hurt my sister."

Not-Joyce's voice was hard when she answered. "You're already hurting her yourself. Why else would she be stealing and skipping school, if it weren't because of your bad influence? Making her eat leftovers from your job instead of proper meals, staying out to all hours - and sleeping with a vampire. No wonder she's been traumatized-"

Buffy's eyes widened in shock. "Shut up!" she stammered.

"Don't you dare speak to me in that tone, young lady." Not-Joyce's attention was caught by Willow, Tara and Xander coming, out of breath, around the hills. "And then you expose her to sick, lesbian relationships in her own home."

Willow's jaw dropped and she froze in place. "Mrs. Summers?" she sputtered, unable to comprehend what she was seeing and hearing. Tara's face went brick red at not-Joyce's comments, and she ducked her head.

"Buffy, make her stop!" Dawn shrieked from where she huddled behind Spike.

"Xander knows what's right, don't you dear?" Not-Joyce went on, unheeding. "Can I get you a cold drink, or would you prefer something . . . hot?" Her hips swayed suggestively towards him, and he recoiled, horror-struck.

"No!" Buffy screamed, breaking free of her paralysis at last. She lunged forward, snatching her sword from her back. Spike barely had time to grab Dawn by the scruff of the neck and press her face to his chest before Buffy's vicious blow struck not-Joyce's head from her shoulders. The body exploded instantly into a cloud of black insects that flew and scuttled and squirmed away in all directions until there was no sign that anything or anyone had ever been standing there.

Buffy slowly sheathed her sword and stood with her head down, breathing deliberately to hold off her incipient hysteria. When she was finally back in control of herself she turned to face the others, but her eyes were still suspiciously bright and her face flushed in anger at and fear for her sister. Her nerves still sang with the adrenalin of the encounter. " _No one_ goes off alone. Do I have to repeat myself for anyone here?"

"Let it go, Slayer. The girl's had a hard lesson already. Right, pet?" Dawn clutched more tightly to Spike's lapels and sniffed loudly, then nodded, her head bobbing against his chest. "Now Bit, if you get my coat all over snot, you _know_ I'll be sending you the cleaning bill." She thumped his chest in indignation with one hand, hard, and he laughed. "That's my Niblet."

He tightened his hold at the back of her neck and bent to kiss the top of her dark head. _God, the scent of her is so much like Buffy - but like a child._ It lacked only the twin dark undertones of lust and power that marked his lover. He knew now he would walk into fire or sunlight willingly for either one of them; they both held his heart in their hands - only Dawn did so completely innocent of the power she had over him.

He wanted nothing more than to draw Buffy close and offer her the same solace he was giving Dawn. But he could almost see her drawing the mantle of her calling more tightly about her for strength, and knew that the Slayer would accept no comfort from such as him right now. Tara slipped one arm about her shoulders in wordless sympathy.


	28. Revelations Book 2

**Revelations Book 2**

When they had recovered some of their equilibrium, the group set out again for the Tree - at some point, it had acquired proper noun status in all their minds. Buffy wasn't sure whether it was simply a trick of the dim, watery light, but it seemed to have grown much closer in the time they had been stopped.

After some time, the low hills began to level out as they pressed on, giving way to a wind-scoured plain. Buffy's only reaction was thanks that it would at least make it easier to see anything advancing on them. They travelled in silence; no one wanted to discuss the encounter with the apparition of Joyce.

Spike walked beside her, but much of his normal swaggering confidence was gone from his step. "Slayer," he rumbled deep in his chest, so low that she almost couldn't hear him.

 _When he stops calling me love, or pet, there's trouble._ She waited, but he didn't seem inclined to continue. "What's bothering you?" she prompted. "If there's something I should know . . ."

He wouldn't meet her eyes, and his words sounded like they were being pried out of him by various unpleasant instruments of torture. "I'll not be much good to you here if all he has to do is send in attackers that seem human."

"We'll deal with that if or when it happens," she said. "Otherwise, you stay with me." _Can't you tell how much I depend on you?_

His eyes blazed up; twin fires of devotion.

The monotony of their surroundings was becoming so oppressive that Buffy was almost relieved when Spike pointed out two objects advancing towards them in the distance.

"Any idea what they are?" He shook his head.

"I see them," Willow said, and murmured, " _video_." Her eyes lost focus as she directed her magical sight far ahead of the group. "It looks like a couple of mountain lions, only . . . they're on fire."

"Flaming cat demons?" Xander's voice was incredulous. "Who the hell's been having nightmares about flammable felines?" No one admitted to being the source of the latest threat.

"I don't think they're from anyone's nightmare. I think we've left the land of our nightmares and are getting close to the centre of the Nightmare Master's power," Tara said. "These could be some of his own defences, rather than something from our subconscious."

"Okay, but if we run into a giant marshmallow man, I'm holding you responsible." Xander looked around into uncomprehending faces. "What? Am I the only one here who has the classic movie cable channel?"

"Just get ready," Buffy instructed, "but do nothing until I give the word. Let's see what he's sending us this time."

The two large cats came leisurely into view, twining sinuously about each other as they advance. Pale blue eldritch flames wreathed their bodies, but didn't seem to harm or consume them. As they approached, Buffy stood with the tip of her sword at her feet and rested her hands on the crosspiece of the hilt in front of her. Though outwardly she appeared calm, Spike could read the lines of tension and anticipation in how she held herself.

The cats made no immediate move to attack, but split apart to encircle the group on opposite paths. Buffy's eyes directed Spike to shift, and they matched this move, weapons ready, circling the four others now clustered together between them.

"Buffy, I can-" Willow began, but Buffy cut her off with a sharp gesture over her shoulder.

"Not yet!"

"Dead man," said the cat moving in front of Spike. Its voice was a thousand glass chimes.

"That a threat, or just an observation?" he replied coolly. It didn't reply, but continued circling.

"Wildfire," said the other - strong winds in a vast Aeolian harp - looking at Willow.

"Ocean." The first again, now peering around Spike at Tara, though he tried to keep himself between them, his axe raised.

"Man, most mortal." At Xander. The two crossed again outside the circle. Dawn gasped involuntarily, knowing she'd draw their attention next.

They both turned to face her. "We know you, Key to the Great Door, Opener of the Way. Why do you fear us? Among all these, you have a place here."

"No," she whispered, and recoiled.

Buffy moved quickly to interpose herself. "You leave her alone and deal with me," she demanded.

The cats ignored her and spoke again to each other. "What of the one who guards them with the sword I do not like at all?"

"She doesn't know what she is or what she will become. She will die as easily as the others." Around them a ring of pale flames rose, and more cat-forms began to appear in the fire.

"Now! Before the new ones are completely formed!" Buffy shouted, lunging forward and attempting to spit one of the two original cats on her sword. It danced back out of her reach.

"Finally! Something I can kill!" Spike rejoiced.

"Then what are you waiting for?" Buffy admonished him as she recovered for a second strike.

Spike waded into the fray with glee, his face split in a wide, tongue-wagging grin. She looked at the laughing face of her demon lover and felt a thrill of passion - and the tiniest hint of fear - seeing the love, lust and chaos that he leashed and unleashed solely at her word. His guilt-free joy in the pandemonium of battle called strongly to some deep place in her soul.

Bold laughter welled up inside her and she let it spill out as she joined him in the battle. They fought side-by-side and back-to-back as though they had been partners for years, each knowing what the other's next move would be even before it was made. Around them, Willow rained destruction from the skies upon their foes, pulling lightning from the skies as easily as a woman might pull her laundry from the line. Tara's magic was less flamboyant but no less effective, causing the earth to open and swallow enemies whole.

The ground should have been littered with the split bodies that Buffy and Spike left in their wake, but wherever one of the great beasts was felled, its body vanished and the flames spread out to spring up somewhere else. Willow and Tara began to falter, stumbling back against each other. More than once, Xander had to strike at a feline form that had slipped past the other defenders, though not one approached Dawn.

Buffy found her strength flagging and the enemy not reduced in number. Her clothes were tattered and her flesh scored in half a dozen places where the claws of a cat had managed to pierce her defences. Spike didn't look much better, but had at least the advantage of no circulation to drive the blood from his wounds. She lunged raggedly once more, knowing that even with her Slayer strength she'd soon have nothing left to draw upon.

But this time, instead of vanishing at the first touch of her sword, the cat in front of her screamed and died, falling to the ground and staying there. The flames surrounding it faded, as did half of the remaining attackers. "Spike! Willow! Find and kill the other one of the original two - the others should disappear!"

"How the hell," Spike panted between strokes, "do you suggest I do that, pet?" He redoubled his efforts, striking out wildly around him with his axe.

"Just don't stop attacking! Willow!" she shouted. "Is there something you can do to hit all of them at once? I can't tell them apart."

Willow spun around; a dervish in peasant skirt and granny boots. A concussive wave of enchantment swept out from her, hammering the air and rattling their bones to the marrow. It passed them by, held harmless in its power, but shivered apart the demon cats all around them until only the two remained, shattered and spent on the ground. Willow, too, collapsed; blood flowed brightly from her nose, and Tara clutched her desperately to her breast.

Spike staggered back to the centre of their ragged circle and took in the two witches huddled together on the ground. "That was a bit of all right then, Red," he offered. "Didn't know you still had that much in you, after the linking spell and all."

"Sometimes I even surprise myself," she murmured, swiping at her streaming nose with the back of one hand and sniffing strongly to staunch the flow. But she didn't try to get up from where Tara was holding her.

The crimson stain held Spike's attention a moment longer than curiosity would justify; he looked up to see Buffy watching him with a troubled gaze. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Letting the others tend to Willow, they moved apart from the group.

He brought one hand to her waist to draw her closer, encouraged when she didn't pull away. "Vampire, love," he sighed, resigned to her censure. "Won't pretend to be something I'm not, or better than I am."

Buffy rested her head briefly on his shoulder, her face turned away. "I don't think you should. It's just . . . you make all of this . . ." an eloquent wave of her hand took in the two of them and their situation, "seem so reasonable, despite nightmares and enigmatic messages from flamey cat-things. Then seeing that . . . takes me by surprise. I suppose it shouldn't." She raised her eyes to him again and drank him in. "But you've changed so much else."

"It's all within the limits of what I am, love. You shouldn't have to pretend to be what you're not either. I saw your face when you were fighting; you were glorious. Your whole body and soul come alive when you fight. You belong in charge of us. Of me.

"Command." His fingers touched her lips, then spread over his heart. "Obey. If I could have the chip out tomorrow, love, I'd still be sworn off of the tasty people snacks now - because you wouldn't like it." He laughed darkly. "Sounds utterly pathetic, but it's how I'm made - in half a dozen ways that have nothing to do with being a vampire.

"Don't punish yourself by denying what you are. Even if you weren't a Slayer, life's too short to not to grab it by the balls and have some fun with it."

"Was that fun? _You_ would think so." Was that a laugh from her, or just a soft, hiccoughing sigh? "Yeah. It's crazy to think this way, with all of our lives at risk, but . . . it _was_ fun." _Where do I draw the line? Where do depressingly-responsible-Buffy and enjoying-life-Buffy meet? I'll be years sorting that out. But for now . . ._

She looked up at him with a sly smile. "And I suppose you think you're part of the fun I should be having?"

In response he turned them so his back was to the others and to bring her hand down to cup the bulge at the front of his jeans. Her experimental squeeze there was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath. _Oh. I can make him breathe._

She leaned into him, lips parted, and he brought his mouth down to hers. His lips had barely grazed her own when Xander's shout interrupted them.

"Oh, bugger this," he said with feeling, releasing her instantly to return to the others.

The bodies of the two cat demons still lay where they had been slain, but the fires around them had been rekindled. Their windsong voices pierced the group with an icy sliver of fear.

"The master comes."


	29. Revelations Book 3

**Revelations Book 3**

The bodies of the cat demons wavered in the flames and grew insubstantial. Between them there was a shivering in the air as something else began to form. It was nothing they could see when they looked at it directly; it hovered at the edge of their awareness - a movement that could only be seen from the corner of the eye.

Moving as one, Buffy and Spike stepped forward to confront this apparition when they found themselves immobilized, wrapped in invisible bonds. Behind them, the cries from the others testified to their imprisonment as well. The Nightmare Master - for whom else could it have been? - moved between them slowly, a vaguely man-shaped glitter in the air.

Spike's skin crawled at this inspection. Vampire senses insisted there was nothing there, only a disturbance of the light, but a cold, sibilant voice poured venom into his ears, stirring the hairs at the back of his neck.

"You dream in blood, bound one. Would you be free?" A small gesture, and the Nightmare Master's indistinct hand suddenly held a minute shiny bit of plastic, metal and wire. "Such a tiny thing, so easily dealt with." His voice was as smug and smoothly reasonable as that of any of the pompous schoolmasters who had ever beaten young William's knuckles bloody for his failure to achieve.

Spike was reduced to stammering, as though memory alone had the power to carry him back into that callow boy. "You can't... You didn't . . ."

"You doubt my power, here at the heart of my realm? The only price is that you turn away. Let me have the girl and her dreams, and you will be free."

The Nightmare Master paused a moment and awaited his reply. The moment became an eternity as a wicked smile curled his lip. _Fighting, killing again. Living flesh between my teeth and hot blood in my throat. No more toadying to the insipid Scoobies - oh, to tear that superior grin from Harris's face and leave a bloody hole! Nothing to stop me now, no restraints._ The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. _No Buffy. She'd have to stake me; couldn't let me live. My heart's desire, and all I have to give up is my heart?_ Spike didn't trust himself to speak, fearing that any words of his would be twisted against him, to trap Buffy and kill them all.

"Why do you hesitate? What keeps you leashed?"

"She does." A nod at Buffy.

"What hold could she have on you? You are a convenience to her, nothing more."

Memories of her seared his mind. _Self-loathing in her eyes as she struggled back into her clothing. "You're just... convenient." Contempt flaring, as she looked down at him in the dank alley. "It would never be you, Spike. You're beneath me."_ Words she had tossed out without consideration, on a creature she thought it beneath her to notice. Wasn't it always that way? He was just another one of the beasts that she would have to put down. As if in response to her view of him, an animal rage began to burn within him, driving a desperate need to strike at and kill the source of his pain.

 _She scorned him, even as he held her prisoner. "The only chance you had with me was when I was unconscious." Mocking his claims that he could change for her. "You're not a man. You're a thing. An evil, disgusting thing." Revulsion at what they had done and the thought that her friends might ever know. "I swear to god, if you tell anyone about last night, I will kill you." Pummelling him as he lay helpless under her. "You don't... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never... be your girl!_ He snarled and gave himself over to the demon inside, ready to lunge at her throat the instant he was freed.

 _Dawn taunting him for his pathetic battered box of chocolates he had intended for Buffy's birthday. "You know she'd never touch anything from you anyway." Niblet... Dawn..._

 _Dawn loves me. Buffy..._ He turned his eyes her way.

Buffy's eyes were wide with fear where she was held, but now he could see it was fear for him, not fear of him. He stopped, and was a man once more, and suddenly free of his bonds. There was a long silence then, as he glanced at her and then down at the ground. _You hold my heart in your hands, and my world in your eyes. Your willing slave, I said. I'll not betray you._ "No thanks, mate," he managed at last. "You'll have to dust me before I let you get to her."

"You will die your final death here at last, then." A negligent wave, and the chip vanished from his hand, no doubt to nestle snugly once again in Spike's brain.

"Get in line, you tosser." Spike jerked one thumb over to where Xander stood. "Harris over there has wanted to do me in for years. You don't want to brown off the boy by stealing his thunder." Under cover of his words, he manoeuvred himself to strike, but was caught and held again as easily as he himself could have caught a mere mortal, once. He could only watch helplessly as the Nightmare Master turned to where Buffy was imprisoned.

"Your consort is a traitor to his own kind, Warrior of the People. What assurance do you have that he will not turn against you as well?"

 _Spike. William the Bloody. In the Watchers' Diaries she had found gruesome suggestions of how he had tortured his victims with railroad spikes before killing them. In the alley behind the Bronze she had asked him, "What happens on Saturday?" He replied matter-of-factly, "I kill you." Spike strutting the hallways of the school. "The last Slayer I killed... she begged for her life."_

She trembled in abject fear, pulling her full skirts around her protectively as he approached. "Look at you. Shaking. Terrified. Alone. Lost little lamb. I love it." Just his presence was a threat to her friends - Willow captured, Xander threatened, Cordelia nearly killed. And Angel. For the sake of that madwoman he had called his Dark Goddess, Angel had nearly died.

Her face flushed deeply as she remembered Spike in the sunlight, taunting her. "What did it take to pry apart the Slayer's dimpled knees?" His whispered threat in the graveyard, when he thought she couldn't hear. "I will know your blood, Slayer. I will make your neck my chalice... and drink deep."

How betrayed she felt, finding out that he had been with Dawn at the Magic Box when Dawn had discovered she was the Key. She had confronted him at his crypt. "Oh, yeah, here it comes. Something goes wrong in your life, blame Spike... Maybe if you had been more honest with her in the first place, you wouldn't be trying to make yourself feel better with a round of Kick The Spike." She frowned. His remembered voice was full of blunt anger, not deception.

 _Spike, battered and bleeding, alone in the crypt. "'Cause Buffy... the other, not so pleasant Buffy... anything happened to Dawn, it'd destroy her. I couldn't live, her bein' in that much pain. Let Glory kill me first. Nearly bloody did." Dawn..._

 _He almost died for her. He would die for me. He may still be a monster, but he's_ my _monster now. I accepted that responsibility when I admitted that he could love me._

Buffy took a deep breath to steady her voice before replying. "He loves me and protects me and mine, and I - I've given him my trust." _And, I think, my heart._ "Nothing you can say will make me take that away from him. You can't make me believe that he'll betray me." She looked over at him, as though her eyes could convey what mere words were inadequate for. He would have closed his own at this balm to his heart, but couldn't bear the thought of not seeing her, even for a moment.

A chill grew in the air between them, and Spike began to fear they had betrayed one another in their glance. _Oh love. We really have to do something about our eyes._

"So if I take this one..."

 _Yes, take me!_ Spike wanted to shout. _I've got three lifetimes of nightmares you can have. Let her go!_ But not a word escaped him, held securely in the Nightmare Master's thrall.

"No!" Buffy shouted. "I'll stay - if you let the others go. I won't fight you any more. You can have all the nightmares you want out of me, just set them free."

A sepulchral laugh echoed around them. "You are in no position to bargain. Why should I accept your offer, when I can have every one of you?" His shadowy form began to fade. "It is only a matter of time, after all..."

Freed without warning from his hold as he vanished, the six of them collapsed to the ground. Buffy was the first back to her feet, and she could only stand looking around her, her eyes wide.

"We are _so_ not in Kansas anymore," Xander murmured where he lay.

They found themselves at the base of the Tree, among tangled roots bigger than even the largest of Sunnydale's extensive subterranean tunnels. The Tree itself loomed vastly overhead and to either side of them, so wide that the gnarled black bark seemed to stretch off like a wall without limit in both directions.

The ground suddenly erupted underneath them into thousands of grasping, seeking ebony tendrils twisting upward - a fairy-tale wall of thorns on acid. Before they could even think to react, the choked growth had cut them off from each other.

"Dawn! Spike!" Buffy hacked at the prisoning branches in desperation, severing twigs and rootlets that showered her with thick, dark sap that smelt of corruption and decay. As soon as she had cleared a small opening in the rabid growth, new strands wove their way in to fill the gaps. More encroached on her until she barely had room to turn. She began to panic as the space about her grew smaller and smaller.

 _Decayed flesh and rotting fabric, an oppressive musty smell of soil. Tickling black beetles and blind white worms wound their way over her body. Utter darkness, and no way to escape..._

Xander tore in panic at the encircling growth, but the unnatural vegetation was icy cold and ripped frozen strips of flesh from his hands, leaving them scored and striped. He thought he could hear Dawn's screams, but they grew fainter as though she were receding rapidly into the distance.

"Dawn! Buffy!" Snatching a hand axe from his belt, Xander tried hacking at the black branches instead. The axe rebounded, leaving no mark or sign that he had even connected. He kept at it until his arms couldn't bear to lift the axe again, and then fell to his knees nearly weeping in frustration.

"Haven't seen you cry like that since Mitch Waters stole your G.I. Joes in sixth grade," commented a sardonic voice behind him. Xander spun on one knee and, losing his balance, fell back onto his ass. "But I guess nothing much has changed."

A dark figure seemed to melt easily through the dense vegetation. Xander started, and hitched back involuntarily across the ground.

"Jesse?"

"You disgust me!" Tara's voice rang in the small clearing and pierced Willow's heart. "Wallowing in black magics until your very soul is _filthy_ with them, using them on me - on _me!_ And you expect me to just take you back? I don't ever want to see you again."

"Tara, baby," Willow pleaded. "It's not like that." But Tara was gone, disappearing into the twisted foliage.

Anguish and fury boiled up inside the witch. "How _dare_ you judge me? You're just jealous that I have more power than you do, that I dare to go beyond petty little firefly spells into something _really_ potent. I'll show you. I'll _make_ you love me."

Willow gathered her power together, ready to fling it at the world and remake it into a place more to her liking, a place with no sharp edges to tear at her heart. She cast the net of magic, only to feel - nothing. She stumbled and felt as off balance inside as though she had missed the bottom step of a staircase. Desperate, she mumbled a phrase to sharpen her concentration and tried again, but still nothing changed. That place inside her, the place that had always glowed with the promise of power, felt as hollow and aching as the socket left by a missing tooth. Not even the smallest pebble would lift from the earth at her command, and Willow fell to the ground, weeping.

"It's past time you came home with us, Tara." She whirled to see her father watching her suspiciously.

"No! I can't! They need my help to get us all out of here," she insisted.

"You wouldn't even be here if you hadn't been meddling in things better left alone," Mr McClay replied. "Now stop this foolishness and come along. You belong with your family."

"I belong with Willow. I love her, and she loves me."

"No one could possibly love a monster like you. You know what you really are inside. Your so-called friends would never understand why you've been lying to them all along." She felt herself dwindle, compress and distort into a misshapen parody of human form. _Ugliness of body to match the ugliness of my mind..._

She lay on the ground in front of him, her life spent, and the marks of his own teeth plain and raw on the smooth column of her throat. He fell to his knees and took her lifeless body into his arms, sobbing and rocking helplessly.

Dawn screamed as everyone around her vanished, swallowed up in the fantastic black vegetation suckering out from the Tree. _Don't leave me alone!_

In desperation, she began pulling at the growths nearest to her. At her touch, branches withered and died. Leaves collected at her feet, dry as mummy wrappings and whispering incomprehensibly as her movements disturbed them.

Heartened by this small progress, Dawn continued to tear at the branches. Somewhere ahead of her she knew she would find Buffy, if she could only rip away enough.

"Xandman. You never did have the guts to deal with me yourself, did you?" Jesse's feral eyes and fangs gleamed in the darkness. "You always had to find someone bigger and stronger to tag along with, like that stupid bitch of a Slayer, so you could feel powerful." He advanced slowly. "Well now it's just you and me, old pal."

Xander struggled to his feet and backed away until he was up against a wall of the chill branches. He felt desperately among his weapons for a stake, but found none.

"What's the matter? No clever quips? No smart-ass comments? I'm glad I was turned, Xander, because otherwise I'd have ended up just like you, a pathetic-" His eyes widened in surprise, just before he vanished.

Sadly, Xander surveyed the dust sifting downward in the still air. "A lot has changed in the past five years, Jesse." He dropped the branch he had broken from the growth behind him, heedless of the pain of the raw flesh of his palms. Around him the branches seemed to falter in their growth, then withered and fell away. He pushed his way through them now without difficulty

Dawn gave a small shriek as Xander suddenly appeared before her through a hole in the trees. He caught her up around the waist and spun her around. "Am I ever glad to see you!"

"Mutual," she squeaked. He put her down so she could catch her breath.

"Where are the others?" he asked.

"Still trapped in there somewhere, I assume," Dawn replied, waving one hand at the wall of thorny branches. "I was trying to get through. When I touch them, they... die," she confessed uncertainly, torn between pride that she wasn't the weakest member of the group, and dread at what might be the source of her power.

"Then you should keep right on touching them," Xander said, forcing his mind away from contemplating the source of Dawn's power over one of the Nightmare Master's creations. He tried to be properly grateful that something was going their way at last, but feared what it meant.

Dawn turned back to the task of making her way through the trees. He took up a position behind her, to clear away the dead branches as quickly as she could destroy them. They had tunnelled about half a dozen feet when Buffy's hand thrust blindly out at them from between the branches. They clutched at her urgently, and pulled on her hand and then her arm until she stumbled through the last of the vegetation and into their desperate hold.

Her face bore the same haunted, empty stare that it had on the day she had first been returned from the grave. Dawn took her sister's sap-streaked face between her hands. "Buffy. You're back. It was only another nightmare." They crumpled together to the ground and Dawn cradled Buffy against her, stroking her hair and murmuring soothing nonsense syllables to calm her as she would a small child. Xander stood guard over them, axe at the ready, but the plants remained quiescent about them.

Awareness grew slowly in Buffy's eyes and her face hardened. She patted Dawn's cheek tenderly, and then took Xander's proffered hand to lever herself up from the ground. "I swear, that bastard's going to pay for making me relive that particular nightmare again." She looked around them. "The others?"

"Still trapped," Xander replied.

"How did you get free?" Dawn laid one hand on a branch in wordless demonstration, and Buffy's brows rose. "Impressive. Let's not waste any more time, then. The last time I saw Spike, he was standing somewhere over in that direction." Dawn oriented herself as her sister had indicated, and they set off again.

She couldn't properly judge the passage of time in the nightmare world, but Dawn thought it couldn't have been more than ten minutes or so when she saw a flash of peroxide-white hair through the dark branches. She pushed into a clearing and found Spike on his knees with his face in his hands. "Spike?" she asked anxiously. It was going to take a very long time to reassemble the group if everyone had to be rescued from the clutches of some personal nightmare.

He didn't even look up at her voice, but only kept on rocking. "She's gone, Bit. She's dead and I killed her." His voice trembled with anguish and self-loathing.

Buffy stepped forward so he would see her. "Spike. _William._ I'm right here," she said, with more patience than Dawn had thought her sister capable of. "I'm not dead, and you didn't kill me. Come back."

Spike looked up, comprehension growing slowly in his eyes until he flung his arms around her waist. He clung to her with what to anyone else would have been bonecrushing force, pressing his face into her shirt. She stroked one hand softly through his dishevelled hair and waited for his calm to return

"Why do you keep calling him that?" Xander asked, peevishly. "William's the guy the demon killed a hundred years ago."

"That's something between us, Xander," she said gently, as Spike got to his feet again.

"She can call me whatever she bloody well pleases, lackwit," Spike said harshly, stung that his Achilles' heel had been so openly demonstrated.

"Spike," Buffy said warningly. " _And_ Xander," she added, turning to take him in with a sharp glance. "We don't have time for the testosterone games today. Let it go."

Spike turned back to Buffy and took her hands in his. "Any name of mine, love, I know will be safe in your mouth."

She spared a little smile and a nod at this sign of his trust. "Enough talking. Tara and Willow are still trapped." She turned to address her sister. "Dawn, keep clearing away the branches. We'll be right behind you."

When they finally found them, neither Willow nor Tara were willing to discuss their nightmares, but only lingered close together, holding hands disconsolately. _If their nightmares were as unpleasant as mine_ , Buffy thought, _I don't blame them for wanting to stay near each other. But we can't afford to linger in self-pity, either._

Buffy gathered everyone around her. "We have to stay close together," she advised. "We can't risk being separated into individual nightmares again. Next time there may not be someone who can bring us out. Clearly we've come to the limit of the amulets' power to protect us."

"So what can we do now?" Xander wanted to know.

"I say we take the attack to him," Buffy replied, "I'm tired of us having to be the ones who are always on the receiving end. Willow, Tara - I need a way to find out what's up there and then get us into the Tree." She hoped giving them a task to focus on would help them to shake off the persistent pall of the nightmare wood. Even Spike hadn't been able to leave behind its effects yet; he kept stealing touches as if to assure himself she was really there, fingers grazing her hair, her shoulder, her hip. Finally she just took his hand and held it tightly.

Tara and Willow moved apart from the others, deep in conversation and gesturing at the Tree. After some discussion, they withdrew a vial of sand from Tara's bag and began laying out symbols on the uneven ground.

Buffy used her free hand to draw Dawn close, stroked her hair back from her forehead, and smiled. "You did good today, Dawn. We wouldn't have made it this last part of the way without you." Dawn ducked her head and smiled in return - a real smile, not the strained grimace she'd been patronizing her sister with for months.

"Have to get big sis to teach you a few moves now, right Niblet?" Spike teased, chucking Dawn under the chin with a move that Buffy privately thought was much too babyish for her. But Dawn just blushed and shrugged, seemingly enjoying his attention. Xander gagged discreetly, but they all tacitly agreed to ignore him.

 _Maybe I should ask Spike to talk to me about Dawn. Last summer seems to really have brought them together. Sometimes-dead sisters who are distracted by saving the world have a lot of catching up to do._ Buffy leaned back into Spike's arm, which had somehow found its way about her waist. It seemed as though the curve of his arm was beginning to feel like a place she belonged, a place where she could put aside duty for a while and simply _be_. She leaned her head back against his shoulder and looked up the dark expanse of the Tree.

The sky blinked.

Buffy started forward out of Spike's embrace, looking up at the heavens. Sheet lightning surged around the peak of the Tree and arced along its upper branches, high in the obscured sky. Sudden intuition drove her forward across the ground and into Willow and Tara, sending them sprawling. Moments later, a blistering bolt of lightning blasted the ground where they had been standing; obliterating all traces of the mystical pattern they had begun.

They struggled to their feet, their skins tingling with the residual electricity in the air. "We're okay. Only slightly cooked," Buffy said, in response to the urgent inquiries of the others. "But it looks like this approach is definitely out."

Above them the dark clouds began to swirl widdershins about the Tree. Dust devils skirled about their feet. For a moment the air was as still as if a god were holding his breath. A trembling began in the air, troubling the higher branches first, but sweeping inexorably lower.

"Everyone take cover!" Buffy shouted, as the hot breath of wind gusted down the flanks of the Tree and over them where they stood. It screamed like a lost soul, tearing at their clothes and hair and churning about their mouths until they could hardly breathe. They struggled to make their way into the lee of the mighty roots surrounding them.

The wind roared around them, making it impossible to keep to their feet. Before them on the stark plain that bounded the Tree, thousands of forms sprang up from the earth as though the land there had been sown with serpent's teeth.

"I have to try the linking spell!" she cried, against the force of the wind that pinned them. "There's no way we can fight this individually; he'll just keep picking us off one by one. I have to take the fight to him. It's our last chance. It's our _only_ chance."

Spike folded her hands into his own and leaned forward until his mouth was at her ear so he could be heard over the howl of the wind. "Be careful, love."

"Careful? When we're about to be attacked by vastly superior forces and I'm heading off to assault the home turf of a demon that's been around since almost the beginning of time? Not gonna happen," she replied the same way, then looked up the Tree to where the Nightmare Master awaited her. When her eyes returned to his, he felt that something had changed between them forever. "And where were you with that advice _before_ I fell-" She took his face in both her hands, kissed him as though it might be the last time, then was gone.

Buffy crawled out from the meagre shelter of the roots and somehow managed to get to her feet in the clearing.  
"-!" she shouted, and the world seemed to falter for a moment on its axis.

They reeled as the wind abruptly died. In the sudden silence that followed, the darkness all around them grew even more oppressive, except that where Buffy was standing she was all at once limned in gold. One by one, her companions collapsed to the uneven ground as she drew their life force into herself.

Willow came into her a glowing coal of power. She could see where the fire was obscured in places with dark twisted strands. Without knowing how she did so, Buffy untangled Willow's essence from the darkness and then gently blew it to a glorious blaze, adding it to her own power.

Tara poured into her like warm honey, kind and strong and loving, and Buffy nearly wept at the acceptance and wisdom that she found there. Xander was a wall of strong stones, occasionally battered, but weathering the fiercest of storms. She made a fortress of his strength within her.

Spike was arctic ice, but quicksilver bright. He brought strength and speed, love, irreverence and laughter that sparkled and fizzed within her, making her laugh with wild joy. The darkness that coursed through him only served to strengthen her.

Then at last there was Dawn. Dawn was a mirror, returning to Buffy her own self, doubled. Blood of the Slayer, given life, form and breath. But then without warning, there was something else between them - something ancient and wild - and the door between the worlds blew wide. /You have called, Slayer, and I will answer you./

Buffy swayed in place, caught up in a net of untamed power. "C-called? Called what?" she stammered.

/Earth./ _What is a man, that thou art mindful of him? Naught but dust, and to dust shall he return._

/Air./ _Spirit of creation residing in flesh. Neither Being nor Non-being, neither air nor earth nor space. What was enclosed? Where? Under whose protection? Neither death nor immortality, day nor night - but ONE breathed by itself with no wind._

/Fire./ _And sparks were struck from Her dancing feet so that She shone forth as the Sun, and the stars were caught in Her hair. Comets raced about Her, and the element Fire was born._

/Water./ _Water shivered, Time trembled. Water and Time crushed loneliness between them, loneliness fled at the word_ Create. _Eternity echoed in her voice, her voice singed the Gander's wings: 'Create!'_

/Living. Dead. Human... and Divine. The Balance will serve you, though this is not yet your appointed hour./

The light surrounding Buffy grew intolerably bright. Dawn became radiance and heat that baked her to her very bones and set her blood to boil within her. She stood transfixed, speared through with more power than she could contain, and she felt her body distort, pulled like taffy, stretching and warping into some new, vast form. Her scream was lost in the sound of roaring winds.

Spike managed to raise his head from the ground where he had fallen. The power streaming from Dawn towards Buffy washed over her and poured out behind her into vast golden wings of light. He squinted into the now near-blinding radiance, but could only make out two indistinct shapes. Dawn's voice - now richer and more musical than he thought a human voice could be, a vast, chiming sound - echoed in the space between the roots of the Tree.

/You are brave in your chosen path and you are dearly loved. There are no mistakes along your way - only opportunities to make a difference./

/You come into the world through love yet see suffering and pain. 'Why?' you ask, do you have to live like this? And we join you in questioning this and we answer with love, 'You don't.' You were never asked to suffer, dear one. You need suffer no longer./

/There is no force in the Universe more powerful than the love possessed in your body, mind, and soul. Use this power of love to break the chains that bind. Call on the Sword of Truth and Love to cut through any chains./

/And then forget./

Gale force winds buffeted them once again, as from a pair of mighty wings beating. A star rose into the blackness, trailing fire and smoke. He followed its path until it climbed so high it was lost to his sight.

Dawn walked out of the light, seemingly herself again, and came over to where he lay. "Never was seen such an angel - eyes of heavenly blue, features that shamed Apollo, hair of a golden hue..." She smiled as she looked down at him. "Creature of darkness - your struggle has not gone unwitnessed. There can be a place for you, if you wish it.

"For what you have done before this, it is your penance to remember more than the others," she said gently, "because there must always be someone to watch over the Defender. But even you can't bear to know everything yet that must be. So, _Observator insopitus_ \- rest now. Your battle is coming - but it is not today."

Spike felt leaden slumber steal into all his limbs and weigh down his thoughts. " _Defensor hominem..._ " he murmured, in the moment before he lost consciousness.

"Yes." The sound of a smile in Dawn's voice followed him into blackness.


	30. Awakenings

**Awakenings**

Spike was the first to regain consciousness but lay still on the bed until he was sure of his surroundings. If nothing else, he decided, the sudden flare of renewed pain in his burned hand assured him that this was the real world at last. His head still spun with broken images from the final confrontation that had driven the Nightmare Master back into the world's unconscious and away from Buffy at last.

He leaned up on his elbows and surveyed the room. Tara, Dawn, Willow and Xander lay sprawled, still unconscious, in the armchairs they must have brought in. Their bodies all bore the same arcane markings as his. They had pulled the bed into the centre of the room to make space for them all around.

A low moan made him turn his head; Buffy was beginning to wake. He rolled to his side beside her, slipping one arm about her waist. "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," he said, leaning over to kiss her as she began to stir.

"Mmm..." she murmured against his lips. One of her hands came up to his cheek. Her eyes fluttered open gradually.

"Spike?" she asked, confused. Then as her awareness returned she realized where they were and what he was doing... and what his hands were doing. She yelled "Spike!" and slammed the heel of her hand into his solar plexus, sending him off the bed and sprawling to the floor.

"The hell?" he shouted, scrambling to his feet. "What's going on?"

"That's what I should be asking you," she retorted. "There was this demon in the cemetery - and then you're in bed with me?" Buffy noticed the others around them beginning to revive. "What have you done to them?"

The accusation stung. "I haven't done a bloody thing to them. We've all been busy saving you from the Nightmare Master," he insisted. "You were attacked in the cemetery and trapped in a repeating set of nightmares. I brought you home and Tara sent me into your dreams after you. When I couldn't get you out by myself, the rest of them came after both of us."

"That's got to be the lamest story I've ever heard, even considering your usual standards," she said mockingly. She threw back the covers, but quickly pulled them over herself again when she realized she wore nothing but her tank top and underwear. "First that stupid plan with the demon eggs, and now this. What kind of scam is this, anyway?"

It's not a-" he began in frustration. "Don't you remember? How we fought your nightmares - and mine? You told me-"

"Did it work?" mumbled Dawn, interrupting him. "Are we back?" She saw Buffy sitting up in bed and moved quickly to her sister's side, capturing her in a fierce hug then settling beside her on the bed as though afraid Buffy would disappear any minute.

"The last thing I remember is that goopy demon," Buffy said. "Now you tell me I've been asleep and dreaming?" A dark image trembled at the edge of her awareness, then slipped away.

"Buffy," said Tara, sitting up carefully in her chair. "Spike brought you to us three days ago - at least I think it was only three days now. You _were_ trapped in nightmares, and we _did_ send him in after you, and then followed ourselves. I just don't remember what happened after that. Clearly we were successful."

"Xander, Willow," Spike pleaded, seeing them leaning forward and rubbing their eyes. "Tell Buffy what happened when we were fighting the Nightmare Master."

Willow shook her head. "I think there was something... were there frogs?" she asked apologetically. Xander had even less to offer, spreading his hands and shrugging his shoulders.

Spike turned to Dawn, knowing she'd not lie to him, but her eyes betrayed the same blankness and confusion that was affecting the others. "I'm sorry, Spike," she said. "But I only get these fragments - just like what always happens when I wake up from dreams."

"It seems rather convenient that you're the only one who can remember anything," Buffy pointed out.

"You as much as told me you loved me," he said. "Do you really think I would forget that?"

"Now I know at least _one_ of us was dreaming," she replied caustically. "How long did it take you to plan this, once I told you it was over between us? I can't believe you actually thought I'd fall for it - telling me you had saved me from some fate worse than death just so I might consider seeing you again? You should have at least made sure someone would be able to back up your story."

Nothing had ever hurt as much as her words did, twisting in his heart. Not losing Dru. Not when she had damned near killed him, years ago. Not even when he had thought she was dead and gone. He did the only thing he could think of to ease the pain; he struck back. "Don't flatter yourself by exaggerating the effects of your charms, Goldilocks. You weren't ever _that_ good. It's no wonder soldierboy needed something - and then some _one_ else." He snatched up his tee shirt and clawed it over his head, jammed his boots on his bare feet, and turned for the door.

"Get out of my bedroom and out of my house and get the hell out of my life!" she shrieked, grabbing up the jewellery box from her beside table and flinging it, striking him between the shoulder blades and making him stagger. Rings and necklaces showered to the floor. She followed it up with a water glass that shattered against the door. His one hand left bloody streaks as he hurriedly pulled it shut behind him. "If I ever catch you anywhere near any of my friends again, I'll finish you off like I should have done years ago!" she yelled through the door.

"How could you!" Dawn shouted, pushing back violently from where she sat next to Buffy on the bed. "I hate you!" She got up and dashed to the door, throwing it open and going after him. "Spike, wait!" she yelled, chasing him down the stairs.

Buffy drew her knees to her chest and dropped her face into her hands to hide her tears. Tara and Willow moved to either side of her on the bed and put their arms around her. Xander just looked uncomfortable.

"Shhh, sweetie," said Tara comfortingly. "Everything will be all right. We're all back together safely and that's all that really matters."

Buffy swiped at her tears angrily. "I can't believe he'd have the nerve to pull a stunt like this; getting someone to put a spell on me just so he could play the hero."

"I don't know," Willow said uncertainly. "He seemed to be really upset when he brought you in that night . . ."

"It's all an act," Buffy insisted. "Don't you see? It has to be. He's fooled everyone."

"It would explain a lot," Xander added, though his expression was doubtful. "Including why he never mentioned it was over between you two."

"I suppose so," Willow allowed, "It's only that-" she stopped, seeing Tara shake her head over Buffy's hunched form. "But like Tara said; the important thing is that we're all safe now," she continued.

"Everything's back to normal all right," Buffy said. "My life sucks and Dawn hates me again."

Dawn caught him at the front steps. "Spike, wait!"

"Why? Buffy suddenly have a change of heart and beg me to return?" Dawn's expression couldn't conceal the true situation. "Thought not."

Spike surveyed the sky. No matter the day, it was at least an hour until sunrise. He turned to face Dawn with a sigh. "Sure, I helped her change the course of a few nightmares, but it wasn't anything she couldn't have done on her own, once she was aware she was dreaming. Then I was sucked into nightmares of my own, nightmares in which I didn't know her and nearly killed her. I could, you know - the chip won't stop me from hurting her now. And what if I can't stop myself? I'm just a bloody killer under it all."

Dawn said nothing. She'd always found Spike more fascinating than frightening, but finding out that something about Buffy had changed enough to allow him to attack her shook the foundations of her world. She shivered, but Spike went on, unheeding.

"When you lot showed up, what happens to me? I get possessed and used to attack you. Then when we ran into Jo- a group of humans, I can't do a thing, because this blasted chip can't tell the difference between them and _real_ people." He drew a much-battered package of cigarettes from his pocket, fished through it until he found one that was relatively whole, and lit it.

"I'll love her until I'm dust, Bit, but she'll never love me - not outside of dreams, at any rate." He sighed smoke. "Maybe I should take this for what it is - an opportunity to break away out of a relationship that's every kind of wrong."

"It's _not_ wrong!" Dawn insisted. "I think you guys are perfect for each other. Buffy's just too thick-headed to figure it out on her own."

He snorted. "That so, Bit? Then why can't she remember what she said to me in our dreams?" _Why can I? This is hell and damnation here on earth, remembering how she talked to me, touched me - like I was someone she wanted._

"Take care of her for me, Dawn," he said, stepping off the stairs. "Since she won't let me do it."

She watched him walk away in the pre-dawn light, trailing a stream of smoke, until he turned the corner and was lost to her sight.


	31. Memories Are Made Of This

**Memories are Made of This**

It started simply enough: a letter arrived from the high school reminding her that the parent-teacher night for the second semester would be held the following Thursday night. Buffy couldn't understand why it should send such a cold tremor of fear through her - it wasn't her academic progress being scrutinized any more. So why, she wondered, did she find herself clutching the letter so tightly that it crumpled and tore in her hands? Buffy set the mutilated paper down on the kitchen counter and took several deep breaths, trying to gather her scattered thoughts.

Unbidden, those thoughts turned to Spike. She hadn't seen him even once since the chaotic events of the previous week, since she'd told him yet again to get out of her life. He'd failed to turn up during her routine patrols, and she supposed she was glad he'd gotten the message at last to stay away from her. Her mind's eye could see him in the school on her parent-teacher night - that explained his intrusion into her thoughts, at least - but why should she remember him coming to her aid? Buffy shook her head to thrust the unwelcome thoughts away and set about collecting the week's laundry from hampers around the house.

Once the first load was in, Buffy settled at the table with the newspaper's classified section, looking for another job. _Just no fast food this time_ , she promised herself. The majority of the afternoon passed between dealing with the loads of laundry and a number of preliminary phone calls, mostly unsuccessful. _There has to be some way a girl can earn a living in this town_ , she complained to herself. _Besides that one..._ she amended. She remembered how Spike had leaned forward over the counter at the DoubleMeat Palace and offered to get her money. _And not that way either_ , she admonished herself. _That's almost as bad._

"I don't need this," she muttered darkly to herself.

"Don't need what?" asked a voice from the doorway. "A life? Sure you do."

Buffy jumped and turned sharply in her chair. "Xander," she complained, "do you have any idea how close you are to being strangled with a dryer sheet? Don't sneak up on me like that."

"Buffy the Laundry Slayer," he intoned mock-seriously. "Nope. It lacks that certain something. Like dignity. You are in serious danger - of not having a life."

"Tell me about it," she replied in frustration. "The most challenging thing I've done all day was when I had to choose between regular or permanent-press for the wash. And don't even get me started on the virtues of the dryer's fluff cycle," she added, throwing up her hands. "God knows the job market's hopeless."

"Hmm... a serious case of hausfrau syndrome. This sounds like a job for the Xandman," he said, taking on the plummy tones of any one of a dozen over-muscled animated superheroes. "Delivering a life to all those tragically deprived-"

"And your point?" she interrupted testily. "As I am painfully aware of my pathetic state."

"I thought you might like to catch a movie with me tonight," Xander said in his own voice again.

"Where's Anya tonight that you're not heading straight home?" she asked, not wanting to get caught in the crossfire of that relationship.

"Bridal show," said Xander glumly. "All weekend. I'm not sure she's forgiven me yet for running off with you in your dreams. But it's the opening night of 'Blade II'," he said, brightening again. "You should love it."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Buffy said, with a sceptical look. "Isn't the point of seeing a movie to _get away_ from your everyday experiences? Because I'm not really sure that film is going to do it for me. Vampire hunters?"

"It'll be great," he insisted. "You can think of it as a comedy. You know - you can laugh at everything they get wrong and talk back to the screen telling them what they should have done." Seeing that she wasn't buying it, Xander played his trump card. "Come on, Buff. You're the closest thing I've got to a guy friend who would appreciate this movie - because there's no way I'd ever invite Captain Peroxide to go with me."

"Gee, thanks," said Buffy wryly. "I think." She couldn't help but wonder what Spike would think of the film. He'd probably jeer it louder than she would, she decided.

Xander mistook her introspection for reluctance. "If it's money that's the problem, I'll even spring for it - it's payday today. Dinner and a movie. How about it?"

"Oh, all right," she conceded. "The whining level in here was reaching Dawn-like proportions any way." Buffy looked around guiltily, making sure her sister wasn't home yet to overhear this comment. They were on speaking terms again, courtesy of a planned shopping trip in the morning, and she didn't need anything to disturb the delicate balance they'd achieved.

"I resemble that remark," Xander replied cheerily. "I have to run a couple of errands, then can I pick you up in about an hour?" Buffy nodded her assent, and he was off.

 _It's just as well_ , she thought to herself. _Better than an evening alone._ Dawn had made plans to have dinner and watch videos at Janice's for tonight anyway - confirmed with a phone call to her mom and plans for a ride home at ten, thank you very much - and Willow and Tara were still so wrapped up in their newly-salvaged relationship that they'd probably appreciate the chance for some privacy. She left a note in plain sight on the table detailing her plans, then tossed the last of the folded laundry into the basket and carried it back upstairs to get herself ready.

Buffy settled herself more comfortably into her seat after the usual run of commercials and indifferent previews and got ready to give the vampire hunter feature the benefit of the doubt. The film opened on a dark cityscape of church spires and centuries-old architecture mixed with the modern conveniences of neon lights and public transit. _That's Prague_ , she thought, moments before the setting was identified on screen. Her hands tightened on the armrests of her seat. _How did I know that?_

Xander sat beside her, oblivious to her inner turmoil, alternately scooping handfuls of popcorn from the extra large bucket wedged between them and slurping his drink noisily.

A barrage of images and sensations flooded her mind. _Spike struggling along a street much like the one on screen, evading pursuers. Promising someone he'd never leave. Stacked... bodies? A terrible fear of being discovered._ Then it changed. _She was comforting him as he wept because he thought she had died. Fighting beside him, knowing she could trust him with her life._

Buffy felt more and more as though the entire film had been drawn from her life - or nightmares. The leader of the vampire nation could have been the Master, complete with bathing pool of blood; the vampire hunter was forced into alliance with his enemies against another, more powerful foe; he experienced growing respect and... love... for a vampire - Buffy clamped down hard before this train of thought could travel any further. _This is all just make-believe_ she insisted repeatedly to herself.

Xander, on the other hand, seemed to be having a wonderful time, cheering loudly each time a vampire was dusted - more spectacularly than ever happened in reality - and jeering when something didn't agree with what he knew. "Will you look at that!" he complained one time. "Everyone knows that silver is for werewolves, not vampires - and how come that vamp's wearing a cross?"

Buffy was happy to let him vent since it meant he couldn't see how profoundly she was being affected by the film. Thoughts and emotions tumbled wildly out of control in her mind. She hung on grimly to the end.

"Man, why don't we have weapons like that?" was Xander's first comment as they drove away from the theatre. "We could kick some serious butt here."

Buffy roused herself from her inward-turned thoughts long enough to reply. "I guess that's why only girls get to be Slayers - they don't tend to go all gadget crazy. The budget of the Watchers' Council would never stretch that far. I _could_ kind of go for the leather gear, though," she admitted.

Xander sniggered. "Whatever you do, don't say that around Spike. He's obsessing enough about you now; show up in leather and you'd stop his heart - if it were beating in the first place, that is. Though you know, that's not a bad idea - if you could actually do him in that way."

Buffy smiled wanly. She rather thought she knew what Spike's reaction would be. A stunned stare, frank admiration, then every ploy imaginable to get her out of it as quickly as possible. "Xander, stop the car," she cried suddenly, as they passed the graveyard where Spike's crypt lay.

He complied instantly, sending both of them forward sharply into their seatbelts. "What is it? What's wrong?" he asked urgently.

"Nothing. I just... I need to go. I need to tackle a few vamps myself tonight, I guess."

"Want some company?" he asked.

"No, I'll be better if I have some time to myself. Thanks, though," she said, as she climbed out of the car. "And thanks for a great evening," she lied sincerely.

"I'll tell the others where you've gone," he promised, before driving away.

Buffy set off purposefully into the graveyard but stopped and leaned heavily against a crypt as soon as Xander had pulled out of sight. She slid down the stone until she was sitting with bent knees, and leaned her head forward wearily into her hands.

 _I would kill for you.  
I would die for you.  
I'd follow you anywhere.  
Command, obey.  
You'll have to dust me before I let you get to her._

Nothing had changed, except that everything had. If the memories triggered by the film of her ordeal at the hands of the Nightmare Master could be trusted, then she owed Spike, owed _William_ , an apology. An apology for the way she had treated him when they emerged from the dreams, and an apology for what she had tacitly assumed his motivations had to be in coming after her. She wasn't looking forward to it, but if she was going to be honest with herself, it had to be done. Buffy climbed back to her feet and set out for Spike's crypt.


	32. Hearts and Minds

**Hearts and Minds**

Buffy's steps slowed as she approached the crypt door until finally she was poised in front of it, one hand caressing the rough stone. She stood there for what seemed like hours, though it was surely only minutes, debating whether it would be better to knock or just to enter.

The decision was taken from her when Spike pulled open the door and stood before her. A half consumed cigarette hung from his lips and a half empty bottle of whiskey from one hand. He looked her over for some time before speaking. "I expect you want to come in, then." He moved gracelessly out of the doorway to let her pass. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" he inquired sarcastically. "Haven't yet made your insult quota for the day?"

"Spike, I-" she began, struggling for the necessary words. "I wanted to... are you drunk?" she asked as he walked unsteadily back to his chair and collapsed into it.

"Not nearly enough yet to deal with you," he replied, removing the cigarette from his mouth long enough to take another protracted swallow from the bottle before setting it beside the chair. "But I'm working on it."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Buffy lashed out without thinking. She struggled to remember the reason for her visit and forced herself back to some semblance of calm. _I probably deserved that,_ she thought. _I hope he'll be willing to forgive me - though I'd understand if he weren't._

Buffy seated herself gingerly on the edge of one of the tombs. "I've been remembering some of my nightmares," she said, not willing to look at him. "I came here to... to apologize for the things I said to you when we woke up; I couldn't remember what had happened in my nightmares. I didn't know then everything you'd done for me." _I didn't know then I'd fallen in love with you._

"I almost killed you; that's what I did for you," he said angrily. "In my dreams, I would have enjoyed killing you."

"But you didn't," she insisted, surprised that he wasn't gloating over the fact that she had come to him, humbling herself.

"I'm a killer, Buffy. I was for a hundred years before I met you, before the Initiative. Part of me - the demon inside - longs for that violence. Whatever's left of the man I was can't fight that forever."

"You've done a lot of good-" she began. This wasn't going at all the way she had expected. She had thought she would be defending her actions, not his.

"But I'm not a good man; I'm not really a man at all, am I?" Spike interrupted harshly, flinging the cigarette aside. "Underneath it all I'm still - what was your stunningly perceptive phrase? - a serial killer in jail. And you and I both know if I were ever let out," he tapped the side of his head meaningfully, "I couldn't ever really be trusted. And that's why you can't love me.

"Maybe I'm a vampire who only dreams he's a man," he murmured. "That's why I'm leaving. So I won't risk hurting you."

Buffy couldn't believe what she was hearing. _Everyone leaves me._ Fury boiled up inside her. "You... fucking... coward," she hissed, getting to her feet. He looked up and blinked owlishly, not comprehending. "Is that how little love means to you? That you'll pack up and run as soon as you don't think you can take the risks?"

She strode forward and clutched at the fabric of his tee shirt. Without warning, she brought her hands violently down and away, shredding the black fabric until it hung in tatters from his waist. "You go on and on about 'the things we do'," she raked her nails viciously down his skin, "the things _I_ do that you like so well..." Buffy knelt in front of him, bringing her mouth to his chest and pulling his pale flesh hard against her teeth. A livid suck-mark purpled his skin when she lifted her head again. "You swear you're in love with me - you damn well better stick around and prove it."

Her hands dropped to his belt, ready to tear at it as well. Before she could act, he pushed her away sharply and she fell back onto the floor. His own rage lifted him to his feet. "Maybe you're not listening!" he shouted. "I found out in my own nightmares just how little control I really have. And now the chip won't stop me from really hurting you, maybe even killing you. I can't live with that possibility. I love you so much that I'd rather leave than know I could do that."

"Oh please," said Buffy caustically, "save me from another person telling me they're leaving me because they love me!" She scrambled to her feet to continue her rant. "First it was my Dad. 'Our relationship will be better if we don't live in the same household.' - well where the hell was he when Mom died? Off in Spain with his damn secretary, that's where!

"Then Angel. 'I'm going so that you can have a normal life.' - who the hell was he trying to fool? My life will _never_ be normal," she cried. "And now you're going to try and pull the same damn thing? 'Ooh, I'm afraid I'll hurt you.'" She let fly suddenly with a devastating kick to his stomach that knocked him back into the wall of the crypt. "You arrogant ass," she said scornfully, "do you think you could even get near me if I didn't want you to?" She advanced on him and released a flurry of wild punches to his face and body.

Spike was stunned twice over. First by the force of her blows, and second by the fact that he couldn't manage to block more than one in three - and it wasn't just because he was drunk. Buffy pulled him away from the wall and he crashed to the floor, smacking his head so hard that his vision dimmed for a moment. In that instant, Buffy had straddled his prone form and dropped to her knees over him to continue her attack. _Been here before,_ he thought groggily, _didn't much like it then either._

"I think I'm in love with you, you idiot! And that terrifies me! You promised me that even without the chip you wouldn't kill - but how do you know you could stop yourself?" She remembered the endless need she had felt in her own nightmare of being turned. _What if you can't love me enough to stop? How many people would I kill before I could stop you?_

"I'd be responsible. I'd have to stop you - kill you." _And then I'd have to die._ "Been there, done that - and I don't want another goddamn tee-shirt!" Fear now, rather than anger, drove her fists.

He grabbed for her arms, desperate to interrupt the rain of blows. "Then curse me too!" he yelled.

Buffy froze, and he managed to grip her wrists at last. "What did you say?" she asked, disconcerted and confused.

"I try to do the things you think are right - because I love you. I think I love you more than my own life - unlife - but that's not enough, is it? You won't dare to love me until I've got a soul," he said, taking a deep, unnecessary breath, "so use Angel's curse on me too. I'm already miserable; how could that make it any worse?" He smiled sadly and released her. "If it meant I could have you, it would be worth any price."

She dropped her hands to her thighs. "It doesn't work that way. He was cursed with a soul so he'd suffer for what he'd done, and he lost it... for being truly happy. That's why he left me," she whispered. "I... don't want to lose you the same way."

Her admission buoyed his heart. "Well at least you already know what you'd get if it happened to me," he said, but Buffy's face said she didn't see any humour in the idea. He tipped her chin up so she'd look at him again. "Then find some other way. Maybe we could even see about getting this hellish chip out of my head at last."

Buffy closed her eyes again, but didn't dare to say a word. His solemn offer tore at her heart, and tears began to spill down her cheeks.

"Are we done?" Spike asked, startling her out of her unhappiness.

"What?" She couldn't gather her thoughts together again; they had been flung so far.

"Because I don't think I can take any more apologies today," he said.

Buffy's lips puffed in a silent, cheerless laugh. She leaned forward until she rested against him, her face tucked into the curve of his shoulder. He slowly brought one hand up and curled it around the back of her neck, kneading gently until he felt her begin to relax.

"I need you," she said at last.

"You're doing it again," Spike said softly, and she lifted her head to look at him.

"Doing what?" she couldn't stop herself from asking.

"Lying to yourself. You don't need me or anyone else. I told you once a Slayer had to reach for her weapons. I was wrong. You alone, without family or friends, weapons or watcher, are the most dangerous weapon of all. It was you who saved us from the Nightmare Master - only you."

"But I... want you."

"Now that-" he said, tightening his arms around her. "That I believe."

Buffy leaned into his embrace. "You know what I'm thinking before I do. You always have. No one knows me as well as you do. That's why you scare me so," she said, barely audible. "Because I can see myself in you. And sometimes I don't like what I see."

"You're not like me, Buffy," he reassured her. "I'm only here to take what I can get, and I've got perfectly evil, selfish reasons - like not wanting to let you get away." He grinned briefly. "You - you give and you give, and it's never enough, and it never ends. And you do it anyway. You're a hero - you're the Slayer. Guess that makes me a bloody sidekick, doesn't it?" At first he laughed, then his expression grew serious again. "Be my conscience, love - my soul. The Slayer doesn't need anyone, but I have hopes that Buffy might, those times that the Slayer's not about. I'll not leave you.

"But could we maybe get off the floor?"


	33. Body and Soul

**Body and Soul**

They made their way slowly back to her house, but their progress was interrupted every twenty feet or so by a passionate exchange of kisses. After the fifth or sixth such interlude, Spike pulled back from the heaven of her embrace to complain. "I don't see why we have to head back to your house. I may not have much in the way of a bed anymore, but there was a perfectly good horizontal surface back at the crypt - and some vertical ones, too-"

Buffy blocked any more words with her mouth on his, and he redirected his energy into returning her kiss, pulling her tightly to him. When she finally broke away, she placed her fingers on his lips to forestall any further comment on his part. "I want to go home," she said, simply. "I want to sleep - or not - in my own bed. To pretend, if only for a little while, that this is a perfectly normal relationship."

He laughed through her hand. "I thought by now you would have had enough of make-believe."

"Indulge me," she said with a smile.

"Oh, I plan to, love. Repeatedly." He drew her fingertips into his mouth and sucked on them gently, making her tremble.

It was then her turn to complain. "We'll never get home at this rate." Buffy extracted her fingers reluctantly from between his lips and tweaked his nose playfully before quickly stepping back.

"Why is it always the nose?" Spike protested, moving to recapture her. "Gonna teach somebody a lesson," he threatened.

Buffy danced away from his hold with one of the first - maybe _the_ first - wide smile he'd seen on her face in many months. "Have to catch me first," she taunted, and broke into a run for home with Spike close at her heels all the way.

At the front door she stopped unexpectedly and spun to intercept him as he bounded up the stairs. His momentum carried them down onto the porch with her underneath him. "This is more like it," he murmured, leaning forward to kiss her again, when she suddenly clutched at his lapels and rolled them both, reversing their positions.

"You're right," she teased. "It is." Before he could recover and seize her again, she was on her feet and opening the door. Spike was on his own feet in moments and followed her through into the silent house. She gave him a conspiratorial wink and brought one finger to her lips warning him not to wake the sleepers upstairs.

They made it up the stairs with only the occasional pause to grope and clutch at each other, but when they reached Buffy's bedroom door Spike held back.

"What is it?" Buffy asked, clearly puzzled by his uncharacteristic reluctance.

"Last chance to change your mind, love," he said. "And I'll just kiss your cheek and go."

"You could do that? Now?" she asked breathlessly.

"Only just," he admitted with a grin. "But I would, if you asked."

"Well I won't," Buffy said, reaching for his hand.

"Good. Offer withdrawn." Spike pushed open the door, pulled her inside and then closed it again quietly behind them.

Once inside the room, their mouths locked together again fiercely. Buffy pushed Spike's duster back from his shoulders with both hands and he shrugged out of it, letting it fall to the floor behind him. Her hands continued down his arms, enjoying the feel of him.

Freed from the coat, his arms slipped around her to pull her closer in a crushing embrace. Buffy spread her hands on his chest and pushed away, breaking his hold to gulp deep breaths. "At least one of us here has to come up for air every now and then," she scolded.

He only laughed and then growled deep in his chest, creating vibrations that tickled her fingertips through the silken fabric of the shirt he had changed into before they left. A delicious shiver ran through her, and Spike smiled wickedly when he saw it. One by one, her nimble fingers opened the buttons of his shirt and spread it wide. When she reached the last, Buffy ran her hands up the pale sculpted muscles of his chest and over his shoulders, and the shirt followed the duster to the floor.

Spike's cool hands returned to her waist. One pressed gently into the small of her back to draw her close while the other slipped under her shirt along the firm skin of her belly to one warm, lace-covered breast. He rolled her taut nipple gently between his fingertips, making her moan low in her throat and throw her head back. Letting his fingers continue to tease her, he lunged forward and closed blunt teeth on the delicate skin of her neck, growling even more fervently. Buffy's hand closed tightly in his hair at the back of his head, holding him to her.

All of a sudden he pushed aside her bra, baring her breast to the cool air and his hot gaze. He bent and greedily sucked her hard rosy nipple between his lips, teasing it with his tongue and teeth. His other hand came up to knead the neglected breast gently, then freed it as well, suckling each eagerly in turn.

He left a trail of wet kisses down her body as the riveting scent of her growing arousal brought him to his knees. Spike's hands went to the button of her pants, opened them and pushed them and her panties down her hips while Buffy pulled her shirt and bra over her head and tossed them aside.

She stepped out of her pants where they puddled on the floor, leaving her shoes behind as well. For a moment, Spike could only gaze up at her, as a worshipper at some holy icon. He brought his hands up her bare legs and then along her back as he stood again. Buffy stepped back as though suddenly shy and turned away, bending over to pull back the sheets on the bed. He came up behind her, pressing his denim-clad hips against her sweet rounded ass. As she straightened, he skimmed his hands up to cup her breasts and pull her back close to him. His tongue delicately explored the curves of one ear when she laid her head back against his chest with a moan.

"And easy on the furniture, right?" he murmured into her ear.

"Mmm? Ah, right. There's no money in the budget for a new bed," she laughed.

He drew her more tightly against him. "I know this little place we might try later. A bit wrecked, and it still reeks a tad of smoke - but I happen to know the landlord personally, and he'll not say a word about any damage done."

"Later is good," she sighed. "But you had better be thinking about here and now, first." Buffy turned in his arms to face him again, kissing him softly before pulling away to sit on the bed. She drew her legs up and under the covers, leaving room for him beside her. His eyes never leaving hers, Spike tugged his belt open. Buffy had never realized before how erotic just the _sounds_ of someone undressing could be. His pants and boots soon joined the collection of clothing on the floor, and he climbed in beside her - the one place he'd never thought to be welcome - and drew the covers over them both, cocooning them together.

At first Buffy simply enjoyed the feel of the cool length of him stretched out beside her, but he soon found ways to distract her with more sensations. His tongue opened her mouth as he kissed her deeply, and when his hand slipped between her thighs, her legs parted for him like water. Talented fingers entered her, moving knowingly in exactly the ways that pleased her best.

She dug her nails into his shoulders in response, marring his porcelain skin and adding to the marks she had made on him earlier. "Ah, that's it, love. Make it hurt just like that," he hissed.

Buffy cried his name into his mouth as she came hard and fast under his hand.

"Now we can take our time for a while," he sighed against her lips when she had quieted again. "And for a change." He brought his fingers to his mouth and tasted of her, smiling. She shivered at the adoration in his eyes.

Spike rolled between her spread legs and pinned her under him. She shifted slightly to accommodate the sweet burden of his weight and cradled him there, then curled warm fingers about him possessively before helping to guide him into her. He slipped deeply, silkily into her with one long, maddeningly slow thrust that made her clutch at his hair and toss her head.

"No," he whispered. "Look at me." She obeyed, mesmerized by his rough voice and intense sapphire gaze. "I told you once I could change. I didn't know then that it would be you who remade me. Everything I am-" Another forceful thrust made her gasp but she didn't look away. "Everything I might become is yours. You own me, body and-" To her surprise, he was the one who turned his face aside.

She took his face between her hands and brought him back to look at her. "Body and soul, William, I know," she said softly. "But not owned. Held in trust for you until you're free." With that, she curved one hand behind his neck to draw him near and brought her legs tightly around his waist. "I love you."

Hours later, Buffy examined the painted wrought iron of the headboard ruefully. She supposed that she could use her own strength to straighten that one piece, and then the broken weld wouldn't show. His belt had held his wrists well enough without breaking, but the bed hadn't been quite so lucky.

She turned her face back to him. Their bodies had had enough of each other for a time that she felt no _immediate_ need to reach for him again. She raised her head from where it rested on his bare chest to look at him more closely.

"Change," she demanded. "Let me see your other face."

"Love, I don't-"

"Do it."

He reached inside and summoned the will for the transformation, savouring the delicious pain of bonecrack and musclestretch as his features rearranged themselves into those of the hunter and killer. Golden eyes met green, unashamed, and curious as to her intentions.

 _Heartbreak gold, his eyes._ This was the face she mustn't forget lay behind the face of her lover. He was a killer, as much as she was, but both of them were so much more than only that. Ironic to consider that she had finally accepted the death-dealer in her nature, just as Spike had been forced to accept he was something more than that.

She surveyed the ridges of his brow with gentle fingertips, and he closed his eyes and rumbled satisfaction at her touch. Looking back, Buffy realized she hadn't seen _this_ face of his in anger for years, practically back to when they had first met. It was when the Initiative had placed the chip in his brain that he had changed. After that, when he fought demons and his own kind, and even when he had discovered he could fight with her after her return, he had done so in human guise. _Does that make the vampire the mask now?_

When he had been Randy, and she Joan, he had worn this face without even realizing it. But he'd fought with her and for her against their attackers. How could this face be his true nature if it had surprised even him?

Buffy let her fingers trail down the hollow of his cheek and into his mouth to explore there. Her fingertips examined his fangs and incisors, careful not to nick her skin on the sharp edges of his teeth. _Dangerous, to let him taste my blood. But cruel, even more so, when he's given all that up for me. I won't taunt him that way._ She brought her hand back to his chest.

"Looked your fill, pet? Because I don't feel any particular need to be fangy right now." She nodded, and vampire features melted back to human ones. The man looked at her quizzically. "What was that about?"

"Just something I needed to know," she replied elliptically. "Does it hurt? When you change?"

"A bit," he admitted. "'s alright - happens to fall into the category of pains I like. As you should know something about." He grinned, and tightened his arms around her. "Care for another go?"

With some effort she broke his hold and pushed back from him in mock indignation. "You promised me candles, wine and music, I recall. What happened to that?"

"What's the world coming to when a bloke can be held to every promise he made, trying to get a bird to sleep with him?" he teased. "Ah, no fair pouting, love," he said, nudging her lower lip back with his thumb. "You know I'll spend my life keeping my promises to you - and to Dawn."

 _And me, mine to you._ Allowing herself to be appeased, she settled back into his embrace. Another go certainly seemed to be what their bodies had in mind, in any case. _And another, and another, until I can't even stand. I can think of worse ways to go. Hell, I_ have _gone in worse ways._ She tilted her head up to kiss him again.


	34. Dreamless

**Dreamless**

Dawn came slowly awake and stretched luxuriously, enjoying the chance to lie in bed on a sunny Saturday morning with no immediate demands on her time. After the crises of the past weeks, she felt she deserved it twice as much as usual. Today would be even better than a usual Saturday, because the four of them were going to the mall - a four-girl shop fest - and she wanted to make the most of it. She could tell that Willow and Tara were already awake; she could hear them muffling giggles in their bedroom, trying not to wake the household.

Dawn decided to hit the bathroom before Buffy could get in there ahead of her. With four women in the same house, willingness to start early was a definite advantage, she thought to herself as she spread toothpaste on her brush. After brushing her teeth, she applied a bit of her favourite flavoured lip-gloss, and then ran a comb quickly through her long hair and secured it at her temples with sparkling clips. Flashing a quick grin at herself in the mirror, she headed back to her room to get dressed.

She chose her clothes quickly because she heard Tara and Willow already downstairs in the kitchen starting breakfast. Once dressed, she hurried down the stairs, expecting to be last to the table at usual, but was surprised to see that Buffy wasn't down yet. Dawn felt a momentary twinge of uncertainty, though the others seemed unconcerned.

"Hey guys, what's up?" she asked.

"Not Buffy," said Willow with a grin. "She's probably experiencing serious post-slaying sleepiness. Want to go bang on the door?"

Willow's cheer infected Dawn, and she smiled back. "Sure." Get to annoy her sister, and by request? How could she refuse? Dawn bounded back up the stairs, two at a time.

"Buffy?" she called, knocking sharply on the door. "You awake yet? I'm going to eat the last of your cereal and use all the milk," she teased. When she received no answer, she opened the door and hesitantly peered into the darkened room, fearing the worst.

She wondered why Buffy would have all the blinds closed on such a beautiful morning, but when her eyes adjusted to the darkness within she understood. Two blond heads nestled close together on the pillows, sleeping quietly. Buffy lay peacefully on her side under the covers and Spike was spooned up behind her with one bare arm wrapped protectively around her waist, his face buried in her hair. Neither one of them stirred at her presence.

Dawn smiled, and closed the door again softly. "Sweet dreams," she whispered, then returned to the kitchen to let the others know that the shopping trip would involve a trio rather than a foursome today.

Upstairs, Buffy curled more closely into Spike's embrace, sleeping deeply and sweetly - and dreamlessly, at last.

-  
 _Author's last words_ (here, anyway)  
Oh my. Does this mean I can finally rest without endless permutations of dream sequences running through my head? Probably not, eh? This wasn't even done before another one began. Do you know, every time I rewatch "Prophecy Girl", "School Hard", "What's My Line", "Innocence" or "The Gift", I wait to see the characters do what I wrote, and am always surprised when they don't.

I'd really like to thank everyone who has been so good as to read and review "Fragments" all along the way. Your encouragement and kind words have meant an awful lot to me as I struggled to control some of my more sophmoric dialogue and situations. This is only the fourth story I have _ever_ written, and has (to this point, anyway) been the most work I've ever voluntarily done for something that didn't pay me any money. It's a short novel, for heaven's sake! It's official, I am obsessed with Buffy (and Buffy and Spike in particular).

Thanks my friends I've never met, my faithful readers. This was a great ride. Now let's go jack another, shall we? *g*


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